If you wait for pickaxes to be perfected, the gold rush will be over before you start digging.

If you insist on only using a mature toolchain/tech stack, you’ll never build anything truly worthwhile. All high value tech co-evolves with its toolchain/stack.

I feel like I’ve seen an earlier version of this thought somewhere years ago.

“Selling pickaxes to miners” is a terrible mental model for innovation. Mature tools sustain commoditized, fungible work. Miners digging for gold aren’t inventors or entrepreneurs. They’re gamblers.

Innovation work generally looks like building your own pickaxes, to dig with rather than sell to others. Because nobody sells the exact tools you need.

Selling pickaxes to miners is a better metaphor for democratization of consumption access. Shadow labor enabling.

This is my attempt to simplify the core idea of this thread since people keep complaining my tweets are confusing https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1313214257001979905