All Trends Are Overrated
Thiel: What are future trends in technology? It's always a hard question. You either give a banal generality — there'll be more cell phones in the future — that's not very interesting. Or you give something super particular which is likely just to be plain wrong.
What I always say about trends in technology: they're probably all overrated. Education software. Healthcare IT. Business enterprise software. Really overrated. If you hear the words Big Data, cloud computing — you should just think fraud and run away as fast as you possibly can.
Education software. Healthcare IT. Enterprise software. If you hear 'Big Data, cloud computing' — think fraud.
Buzzwords Mean Inadequate Differentiation
Thiel: The reason these things are overrated is that when you have something that can be reduced to a buzzword, it means a lot of different people are doing it and they're somehow inadequately differentiated within that particular field.
The kinds of companies I think are underrated and undervalued are the ones that are somehow one-of-a-kind. That don't easily fit into some sort of narrative. That are hard to actually explain by analogy.
If it can be reduced to a buzzword, a lot of people are doing it. They're inadequately differentiated.
One-of-a-Kind
Thiel: We're investors in Airbnb. You say — what kind of company is that? It's actually just a one-of-a-kind new hotel lodging business. It doesn't really fit into categories. But that really misses the uniqueness of the business.
Great companies always have this one-of-a-kind attribute. People are spending too much time studying the things everybody else is studying. They're spending too little time on more particular things that they're really passionate about.
Airbnb is one-of-a-kind. Great companies always have that attribute. Study what others aren't.