Oct 17, 2026 · 32 min · 14 segments
Most startups spend their early years shipping products and growing users. Kalshi spent them fighting to exist. Founded by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, Kalshi set out to build a regulated…
Tarek MansourGuest
Luana Lopes LaraGuestBrandon FeenGuestJoelGuestShannonGuest
In the start, a single day that we call, I think, 60 or 65 lawyers, and then when we finished the list, we were like, "Wow, none of them said this was possible." [laughs]
We had talked to pretty much any lawyer that would talk to us about this, and, you know, everybody rejected us.
Other companies in our batch were shipping products, acquiring new users, and growing every week, whereas we had...
So as a company, the only choice we had, if we believe that we were right on the law, if we believe that this should exist in society, is to sue our own regulator, which is what we did.
Forget product market fit.
He doesn't have regulatory market fit.
There's probably nothing more bold, more ambitious than suing your regulator.
We won, and then I don't remember what happened after that, but I think everybody was screaming in the office and, like, there were chairs flying around, and we celebrated that day.
In the start, a single day that we call, I think, 60 or 65 lawyers, and then when we finished the list, we were like, "Wow, none of them said this was possible." [laughs]
We had talked to pretty much any lawyer that would talk to us about this, and, you know, everybody rejected us.
Other companies in our batch were shipping products, acquiring new users, and growing every week, whereas we had...
So as a company, the only choice we had, if we believe that we were right on the law, if we believe that this should exist in society, is to sue our own regulator, which is what we did.
Forget product market fit.
He doesn't have regulatory market fit.
There's probably nothing more bold, more ambitious than suing your regulator.
We won, and then I don't remember what happened after that, but I think everybody was screaming in the office and, like, there were chairs flying around, and we celebrated that day.
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