Move The Friggin Cone

Some asshole made an illegal right turn onto Lake Shore Drive in Chicago yesterday.

There was a line of traffic cones specifically to prevent this. He ran right over them and dragged one cone into the middle of a southbound lane of cars waiting to exit.

Now the lane was stuck.

Some folks just honked. Because they couldn’t imagine why they weren’t moving. So honking was their solution.

The more interesting folks were the ones who saw the problem and decided the solution was to merge back into the flow of Lake Shore Drive traffic. Which is going something like 60 mph. Yes, it’s posted 40. No one goes 40.

So these people were narrowly avoiding an accident because no one wanted to get out of their car and move the friggin cone.

Why?

You could chalk it up to laziness. But I think there’s something deeper going on. Most tweens say it out loud.

“I’d rather die than be seen with you.”

Death over embarrassment.

When I met Paul Graham, it was kind of ridiculous.

My partner and I were in Boston just before our interview for Y Combinator Winter 2006. We went out for Indian food the night before.

Just as we were finishing, all four YC founders sat down for dinner at the other end of the restaurant.

Immediately I realized: I need to go say hello.

That’ll be good, right? A warm little idea of who I am before tomorrow?

So my partner and I got up and did a casual, “Hey guys. I’m Nathan, and this is my partner Adam. We’re meeting with you all tomorrow. Just wanted to say hi. Have a great dinner.”

Paul looked at me like I was an alien.

Nathan Kontny. Never heard of you.

His eyes only said, “What are you doing here?”

I was incredibly embarrassed.

Jessica, always the real operator, knew exactly who we were. Or faked it masterfully. She was insanely warm and greeted us the way you’d expect from someone you’d be spending time with very soon.

You’d be as surprised as I was, then, that we actually had a decent meeting with Paul the next day.

We got an offer from that second cohort of YC, and off we were.

Did the dinner greeting help us or hurt us?

I have no idea.

I’d like to think it helped. Not because it was a savvy, “I am so smooth and cool” moment. But because a lot of unusual things in my life have started with moments like that. Job offers. Promotions. Checks.

Because I have a theory that most successful people and projects are successful in direct correlation with their appetite for embarrassment.

Most people are not stopped by difficulty. They are stopped by the tiny public humiliation of being seen trying.

What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Peter Thiel

If you want to build something huge, you need a contrarian idea that very few people are doing, let alone agreeing with you on.

People are going to think you’re an idiot.

You will have to set aside all that embarrassment every time you walk into a meeting, get up on stage, send a pitch deck or cold email, or walk up to some stranger you hope will write you a check in the middle of their tikka masala.

And realize, it actually isn’t better to die than to lose a little status being embarrassed.

That’s the only way to crack through the things you really want to achieve.

You will look dumb trying to learn to work out for the first time. Or speak another language. Or start that startup you have 0 users for.

I realized no one was going to move the cone. I’m in the middle of a run but decided I might as well fix this.

I made sure the guy in front saw me and wasn’t going to run me over. Then I took 30 seconds to grab the cone and put it back where it belonged.

It did dawn on me that a bunch of these drivers might think I was the idiot who knocked the cone down in the first place, causing them to be five minutes late for work.

Maybe someone would give me the finger.

Shit, maybe the cops would pull up and ask why I was walking on Lake Shore Drive, which is a really weird place for humans outside of cars to be.

Whatever.

None of these things seemed actually dangerous. Or illegal. I wasn’t doing anything ethically wrong.

At worst, some guy gives me the finger because he has no idea what’s actually happening.

At best, you had a pleasant drive to downtown Chicago on Tuesday and never got into an accident with a bunch of people trying to drive around a bright orange traffic cone.

Of course, not all embarrassment is a recipe for success. The embarrassment of having your nudes on the internet, or being exposed as an asshole who treats your employees like shit, is a real signal. That is embarrassment trying to save you from something.

But most embarrassment is actually just trying to protect your vulnerable ego from losing an imaginary status.

Your ego doesn’t want to look like it’s trying and not good enough. It doesn’t want to face that it’s not a genius. That it could possibly be wrong about an idea. That no one else might care about it like it does.

Now that’s the kind of embarrassment where you need to move the friggin cone.