Counterexamples? Would love to hear them.
Otherwise, this is an extremely banal observation on Thiel's part.
One example.
PCR helped catalyze the multi-billion dollar molecular biology industry.
Reminds me of one of the themes in the book "Blue Ocean Strategy": the importance of value innovation, where the stress is on both low cost and differentiation.
Penicillin
It's about breaking through the known, and can occur in any field of endeavour and will lead to new information: with that information a product should be created - Steve was, and Peter is looking for those products. They are in the position to do so, but neither will have that initial expansion of mind.
Seems like extracting the financial wealth of a breakthrough is why investors seek them.
But the Mac is a good example of a technological break thru that had imperfect packaging, pricing AND timing.
The packaging was too restrictive for the time. Jobs' vision was right, but the industry hadn't developed far enough that you could ship a machine without internal slots and be successful.
The pricing was out of line with the rest of the market, and the rest of the market didn't recognize sufficient increase in value due to the GUI to make the pricing make sense.
And of course, both of those issues were issues of timing. The Mac took several years to be successful, and depending on how you measure things, some would say it has never become successful (still only being %23 of the market or something like that.)
But the Mac was a technology break thru. In fact, it contained many such breakthrus, both in hardware and software.