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Elad Gil: How to Tell Real Tech Hype From Fake

By Elad Gil · AI & Technology · 3 min read

Social was real. Mobile was real. IoT was fake. Edtech was fake. Gil says the real hype cycles produce giant companies. The fake ones produce articles.

Key Points

Real hype cycles produce giant companies — social gave us Instagram, Pinterest, Spotify; mobile gave us Uber, DoorDash
Fake hype cycles: edtech, IoT, geo apps — everyone thought they were a thing and nothing happened
AI is real — because you see real usage, real products, from basically zero a year ago

You know it's a real thing because you see real usage. It's not just people writing articles.

Real Hype vs. Fake Hype

Gil: Silicon Valley has always gone through real hype cycles and fake ones. By real, I mean it translates into something that actually has enormous impact. Fake ones are things where everybody thinks it's a thing and then nothing happens.

Between 2010 and 2015, social was a real hype cycle — you had Pinterest, Instagram, Spotify. Mobile was real — Uber, DoorDash. SaaS was real.

Then you had fake hype cycles. Edtech — nobody will pay for it. IoT. Geo — everything was going to be a geo app. A lot of them overlapping in a short period of time.

Real hype cycles lead to giant companies. Fake ones lead to articles.

Why AI Is Real

Gil: I think the AI wave is a very real one. And I think it's going to get much bigger in the next year.

Reason one — you see companies getting massive velocity in terms of revenue or usage from basically zero about a year ago. MidJourney launched in June-July of last year. ChatGPT launched in November. Character AI — brand new company. These things are getting enormous traction. They're real products.

You know it's a real thing because you see real usage. It's not just people writing articles.

You know it's a real thing because you see real usage. It's not just people writing articles.

We're Very Early

Gil: It's been eight months since ChatGPT. GPT-4 came out four months ago. A planning cycle for an enterprise is six months. So all the big enterprises haven't done anything yet. And it makes sense for them to have done nothing yet.

Tooling companies are going to pick up as these things pick up. Different applications will emerge with enormous usage that nobody's thought about. We're very, very early in the hype cycle.

I think we'll have some trough of despair at some point. But I don't think it's anytime soon. It's just starting.

All the big enterprises haven't done anything yet. We're very, very early in the hype cycle.