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You can't really move a mine.

If you hired a team of 12 diggers after landing, you’re gonna have a hard time fitting everyone into the helicopter. Even if they all fit, this kind of move is so painful that you’ll resist the conclusion that there’s no gold here for much too long.

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Naval Ravikant has described this as being in a helicopter, looking down into a dense, infinite jungle. Once you find a spot you like, you land the helicopter and start digging. But if you don't find anything, you don't start roaming around the jungle: you climb back into the helicopter!

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if you spend your time on these things, you won't have any left to actually look for gold, which, unfortunately, only you as a founder can do. Researching markets, talking to prospects, wrapping your head around the problem space — all that is a full-time job too, and some more.

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Do not build a mine before you struck gold.

Everyone is just so eager to build a mine — grow their team, set up processes, define OKRs, etc... — because 1/ they feel like that's what successful businesses do 2/ it’s a clear and easy task, whereas looking for product / market fit is hard and ambiguous.

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Know whether you’re digging old or new ground. Old ground is ground that everyone has been able to dig for a while.

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Market is king. If you're on a site with no gold, it doesn't matter how good of a digger you are, or how "persistent" you can be — you're wasting your time.

Conversely, it didn't take a genius to strike gold during the gold rush in California in the 1850s.

That's certainly been my experience over the years: I've seen folks I thought were brilliant w