Reddit reviews Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic

Oh, the stories I could tell about this subject. However, rather than get myself into trouble, I will give you a good book recommendation that chronicles the story of the search for diamonds in the Canadian Arctic. This covers some of the stuff you are asking.

• Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic by Kevin Krajick
  
  You’re basically familiar with the main components already on a how to become a junior. There’s a few different pathways to actually running a junior mining company, but they all basically fall into two categories:
  
  
• 1. be an entrepreneur
     
     
• 2. work for an entrepreneur
     
     I’ve in been in the business since the late 90’s and have worked with majors and juniors. While I have been a self-employed consultant at times, I don’t consider myself that much of risk taker to actually start an exploration company. I’ve been around enough of these personalities and talked with successful ones and not-so successful ones to provide some high-level advice.
     
     The tl;dr version is:
     
     
• 1. do some grassroots exploration; find something interesting
     
     
• 2. stake the claims
     
     
• 3. attend PDAC; talk to juniors with a geographic fit or commodity class to your property
     
     
• 4. get someone interested; sign a buy-in deal, where they invest into further exploration for an increasing ownership stake
     
     
• 5. sell off your majority stake in the property, but hold on to a royalty deal
     
     
• 6. rinse and repeat
     
     The best way I found to explain (and to relate) the junior exploration business is to think of it as a very niche branch of investing in real estate. No matter the technical details of a project, the end result is a land deal. Someone is investing capital for a piece of land that has the potential for higher economic value if developed (i.e. a mine is built).
     
     Now comparing the junior exploration industry to real estate brings into a comparison where investment capital comes from.
     
     
• Private money
  
  
• Public money
  
  Public money is basically most of the companies that set up a booth at PDAC. These companies are listed on the TSX or TSXV and are soliciting the public for investing capital by offering shares in their companies.
  
  Private money basically comes from all the wealth management groups or hedge funds. Look up the various companies that have set up shop on Bay Street.
  
  To access these sources of money isn’t straight forward. It does require some networking, which requires time. The other aspect is that you will need to find a lawyer that can help with drafting contracts and various other agreements.
  
  
  This is how I would approach this situation if I were a 22-year-old fresh geology grad, with the intent of owning my junior mining company.
  
  
  
• 1. Work 5 years; for a few different juniors on a few different projects. Save some money.
     
     
• 2. Take that saved money and the knowledge gained to find some prospective ground that you can stake a claim or buy into. With about $5000 to $10000 you can self-finance a small exploration program. Review the claims and geology on the various provincial websites. Find an area that might have had historic mining, historic exploration, similar geology to a new ore deposit model..etc. You could connect with a local prospector and strike up a deal. Offer your services as geologist for free for some type of back-end deal.
     
     
• 3. Through out this time period, continue networking. Become familiar some VP of Exploration of various companies. Seek out some gray-hair geologists. Maybe bug a former Thayler Lindsley or Bill Dennis award winner for advice.
     
     
• 4. Between networking and finding your “own project”, you should be able establish a connection with someone directly or who knows someone that would be willing to listen to your story on your project. That person will be your first investor and you’re off to the races.
     
     
• 5. You’ll also need to be an avid reader. You’ll need to pick up books on contract law, public markets, take some short courses at conferences, work on your public speaking.
     
     
     In terms of direct sources of information, Edumine.com has a lot of online coursework and webinars. I’ve taken a few and they are pretty decent. I wouldn’t spend too much money here, but if there’s a specific topic you want to learn more about, it might be worth the cost.
     
     
     Sedar.com; Every publicly traded company in the minerals business publishes a NI 43-101 report on a project. If you want to get some great background info, this is a good place to go. Look up a claim map, find the company name, go to their website, find their project name, look up the NI 43-101 on that project.
     
     Short Courses at Conferences; Roundup/PDAC/CIM and various provincial conferences will have short courses where you can get an infodump quickly on a specific topic. For instance at Roundup this year, there was a short course called “Capital Markets for Geologists”. Basically, it was a mini-mini-investment MBA for geologists in a two-day course.
     
     
     There’s another subset of this discussion I haven’t even touched. Many, many junior mining companies are simply shell companies. They are only setup for accounting purposes. People play the stock market game by moving projects in and out of companies, selling and buying shares, and even changing their company name to match the investing euphoria of the day. For example, add “Cobalt, Blockchain, or Cannabis” to your company name and watch your share price skyrocket.
     
     Anyway, there’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll pop back in periodically and see if anyone asks anymore questions.