Kalshi CEO criticizes conventional business advice, advocates risk-taking

Most startup founders collect advice like frequent flyer miles. Tarek Mansour, the 30-year-old CEO of prediction market platform Kalshi, would rather light the whole loyalty program on fire.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Mansour dismissed the standard playbook for building a company, calling conventional business wisdom “usually mostly trash.”

From regulatory underdog to $22B valuation

Kalshi closed a $1B Series F funding round led by Coatue in May 2026, valuing the company at $22B. That’s double the $11B valuation the company carried in late 2025, a pace of appreciation that most publicly traded companies would envy.

Mansour co-founded Kalshi with COO Luana Lopes Lara in 2018, and the platform opened to the public in 2021. The company has grown to command roughly 95% of the US prediction market share, according to Mansour’s own claims.

Kalshi famously sued its own regulator, the CFTC, to defend its right to list event contracts on topics like politics, sports, and weather. The company operates as a CFTC-regulated exchange, giving it a legal moat that unregulated competitors struggle to replicate in the US market.

Chaos by design

Mansour’s philosophy extends beyond ignoring outside counsel. Internally, Kalshi runs what he describes as “chaos by design,” with minimal management layers and a deliberately flat organizational structure.

“The worst advice that most people get is that you should go and seek out a bunch of advice. There’s really no recipe to any of this stuff. People are over-reliant on advice, and people love giving advice because it makes them feel smart and powerful. It’s usually mostly trash.”

The competitive landscape and what’s next

Kalshi’s rise has not occurred in a vacuum. The company competes most directly with Polymarket, the crypto-native prediction market that gained massive attention during the 2024 US presidential election. Kalshi operates through federal regulation and traditional finance rails; Polymarket through blockchain-based infrastructure and a more global, less regulated approach.

Mansour has acknowledged that an IPO is on the table but stated clearly that 2026 is not the year. The company also faces ongoing regulatory challenges, including a lawsuit in New York state.

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