Tech investor and Republican donor Peter Thiel said Silicon Valley has "jumped the shark" and there won't be many more breakthrough consumer internet companies.
"With respect to consumer internet, which has been the big area in tech for 25 years, it's been the single area that's dominated all others, perhaps there aren't as many big breakthroughs left in consumer internet," he said. "The big ideas have been tried."
Thiel made the remarks on Thursday at the annual DealBook conference in New York. His comments about consumer internet ideas being exhausted are particularly telling, given Thiel's background: He first gained notoriety as a co-founder and CEO of PayPal, and earned much of his fortune as an early investor in Facebook.
Peter Thiel moved his home base to Los Angeles from the San Francisco Bay Area earlier this year. In September, he moved one of his venture firms, Mithril Capital, from its headquarters in San Francisco to Austin, Texas.
"There's certainly a political layer where Silicon Valley feels like a one party state. There's a sense that the network effects that made Silicon Valley good have gone haywire," he said. "It's not the wisdom of crowds, it's the madness of crowds."