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.
