The sharpest investing question I heard this year came from my three-year-old refusing to put on her shoes.
"What if we don't?"
She uses it on everything. Bath. Bedtime. Getting in the car. It's a stalling tactic, and it works on me more often than I'd like to admit.
It's also the question my industry has mostly stopped asking.
Look at venture in 2026. Everyone is chasing the same handful of AI names, most without a real shot at the allocation. Firms are flying to China to bid on the same in-licensed assets. Deal models that only pencil if the exit clears $10B.
None of those moves is irrational on its own. That's what makes consensus dangerous. Each decision looks defensible in isolation, and the crowding happens anyway.
The good decisions I've seen this year, the ones I suspect will look obvious by 2030, started with someone quietly asking: what if we don't do what everyone else is doing? Nobody was being contrarian for sport. They just paused before joining the line.
The uncomfortable part: every investor I respect had that reflex at three. School trains it out. A career trains it out harder. Then we spend money and failed fast-follower bets relearning a question a toddler asks for free.
I'm not training it out of her.
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