Kalshi’s Tarek Mansour vs. the Federal Government

**Tarek Mansour** (0:00)
The thing that was unique about us is we never pivoted. It was always Kalshi. I mean, Kalshi is everything in Arabic. We always wanted to build everything exchange, exchange for all these different assets.
And we didn't build Kalshi to build a company. We built a company to build Kalshi. It's a bit different.

**Brian Halligan** (0:13)
I see.

**Tarek Mansour** (0:13)
We were dragged by the idea. I wasn't the type that wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I think if you reroll the dice multiple times, I'd probably just be a trader or risk manager. I would not be an entrepreneur. But the idea was so glaring in front of us that we just had to do it. We felt that we had to do it. So the whole point of doing this whole thing is the idea.

**Brian Halligan** (0:49)
Hey, everybody, today we have Tarek on from Kalshi. He is a gem. This is a really good episode. They walked through the desert for many, many years in this company and went sideways. Then they made a very risky bet to sue the federal government and won. And this thing has ripped ever since. It's growing, you know, at similar rates to OpenAI and Anthropic, but a few years behind. I think you're going to like it. I'll be back at the end for my takeaways.
We just met for the first time a couple of weeks ago at David Solomon's house and it was a CEO dinner.
And you had some very unusual ideas about CEOing. This is why I wanted to have you on the pod. And so I want to get into those. Let's just start with your co-founder. It sounded like it's a semi-co-CEO relationship. How do you two run the company? How do you split it up?

**Tarek Mansour** (1:43)
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, we've, over the years, we've constantly been asked this question.
And we never really had a very clean answer to this. And we always thought it was sort of like a weakness. And our perspective on that has changed. I mean, dramatically. I actually think whatever model works for us, works for us. Great. You know, and if you figure that out, then, you know.

**Brian Halligan** (2:00)
Yeah.

**Tarek Mansour** (2:02)
And, you know, the way, the best way to describe it is that I think, like I operate at the very high level strategy, make sure that we're going in the right direction. Where's the world heading? Where are our rights to win? And just thinking, a lot of thinking continuously.
And then I'm very, very low in the details.

**Brian Halligan** (2:21)
Okay. You're high and low.

**Tarek Mansour** (2:23)
Yeah. Extremely high.

**Brian Halligan** (2:24)
Head in the sky, feet in the ground.

**Tarek Mansour** (2:26)
Yeah.

**Brian Halligan** (2:26)
Okay.

**Tarek Mansour** (2:26)
But very, very low. I'm talking like...

**Brian Halligan** (2:28)
Coding.

**Tarek Mansour** (2:30)
Yeah. And more specifically, like marketing and the copy and the details and like everything on how we're marketing something.

**Brian Halligan** (2:36)
Yeah.

**Tarek Mansour** (2:36)
Yeah. How we're talking about the product, all these little things that like the end consumer, whether it's someone looking at a billboard or someone who's like in the product is going to experience, like what are they going to feel?
And everything else that is actually running the company is Luana.

**Brian Halligan** (2:49)
Okay.

**Tarek Mansour** (2:49)
That's basically, I think one of the best way to describe it. And then I do the external stuff, the regulatory, the policy, you know, the fund-raising, all the other external aspects of the job that tie to marketing and sales. But the day-to-day running of the company, like making sure that the company is actually run is Luana.

**Brian Halligan** (3:04)
How do you disagree? You must disagree about stuff.

**Tarek Mansour** (3:06)
We disagree a lot, like all the time.

**Brian Halligan** (3:07)
So how does that play out?

**Tarek Mansour** (3:09)
I actually think we kind of disagree by design. Like we have this thing, this dynamic over time. It's become a thing where like we essentially will always take the opposite side of the argument.

**Brian Halligan** (3:18)
Are you a contrarian?

**Tarek Mansour** (3:20)
I'm the guy in the room that will be sort of the negative, like everybody's pumped about a plan. I'm like, oh, here's how it's going to fail and all the issues I have.
But we tend to sort of just like disagree with each other often.
And I think also, like, you know, again, it's people like, oh, you know, how you disagree and disagreement, like continuous disagreement is an anti-pattern. But for us, it ended up being a pattern because we're a company, we're this very complicated company that has this constant, continuous, delicate balancing between how much risk to take on the regulatory front and, like, you know, innovation and regulatory. And you have to always balance those two things out. And you see it now in AI and safety and innovation, all of that. And, like, that sort of debate is a continuous force to drive us to the middle. We end up getting, you know, not always the right answer, but we're not too far from the right answer. And we never oscillate between the two extremes. And I think that's one of the powers of having, like, two equally powerful, like two co-founders in an organization. Because if you're the only one, you know, anyone, like anyone that reports to you or whatever, like anyone that you hire that is not a founder, it's inevitable that they won't always tell you the truth. It's inevitable. Like no matter what culture you build, et cetera, like there's different incentive structure than someone who's a founder that owns as much equity as you, et cetera. And so you can stray, right? And here it's very hard for either of us to stray.