Luana Lopes Lara: Youngest Self-Made Woman Billionaire on Kalshi, Bitcoin & Beating the Feds

**Luana Lopes Lara** (0:00)
All we could do is we're gonna decide if we're gonna sue the government to be able to bring these markets. And we had one month, and I remember that conversation we had, guys, it's gonna be the most intense month of our lives, and we have to just like, literally give every single thing that we have. It was a very tough, like, one to two weeks to decide, are we being stupid? And this is never going to work.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:19)
Well, you were named the youngest self-made female billionaire.

**Luana Lopes Lara** (0:24)
It's very surreal, and it's just another way to look at how big the company got.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:36)
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. I am so honored to have with me in person today, Luana Lopes Lara. She is the co-founder of Kalshi. And as we know, prediction markets are all the rage right now. They're sort of converging with crypto. So Luana, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for being here.

**Luana Lopes Lara** (0:52)
Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:54)
I would love to start with your fascinating and very inspiring backstory because you went from professional ballerina in Brazil to MIT, very impressive, to working on Wall Street, to founding Kalshi, which is the first federally regulated predictions market, right?

**Luana Lopes Lara** (1:13)
Right.

**Natalie Brunell** (1:14)
It's kind of a big deal. The valuation is pretty huge. It's done incredible things for your life. So take me back to the start.

**Luana Lopes Lara** (1:20)
Yeah. So everything says it's very random. My background for sure of where I've been. But yeah, in Brazil, it's actually very common if you're like a very young girl, two years old, your parents put you to the ballet classes and it's very normal. I was extremely lucky that I just loved it from the very start. It was like when I was very little, I just like I want to do more classes and more classes. Why do I start taking tap classes and jazz classes and all those things? But that always coexisted with school. I always wanted to be number one. I always wanted to be the best one.
So the school year in Brazil is January to December. So because of the season is the opposite than here, and we would get all the list of books for the year, like end of November maybe, like when we end and then we'd start back in February. The day that the list would come out, my mom would take me to the bookstore, would buy every single book for the year, and I would read all of them before the classes would start. So for me, it was always the true size of like ballet. I loved it so much and I wanted to be so good, but school was just so important to me. I was always very ambitious. When I was little, I had this paper next to my bed that everyone cool that I would learn about in school, I would write the name down. So I would learn about Churchill or Alexander the Great. I would write their name and be like, one day maybe I will try my best to do something that's even remotely similar to what they do. So I was always a weird child in that way, but I've been motivated by always trying to be at the best spot that I could be for what I wanted to do. I went to the professional ballet school. It's called the Bolshoi Ballet, which is the biggest ballet in Russia. They only have one school outside of Russia, it's in the south of Brazil. So I moved there. I was training really eight hours a day. My routine was insane because I would wake up at probably around six. I would go to school from seven to 12, then I'll go to ballet school from 12.3 to nine PM, then I'll go home and I'll have to study for SATs and all those things I wanted to come to the US.
It was a similar thing.
I love ballet, that's the thing I love doing the most, but I had higher ambitions and I wanted to be at the best school. That was in the US, so let me apply to try to go there.
Everything worked out and it was from there.

**Natalie Brunell** (3:40)
Just curious, was this kind of ambition and belief in yourself instilled in you from your parents? Do you think it's something that you always had?

**Luana Lopes Lara** (3:49)
Not at all. I think it was kind of born like this. My parents were almost the opposite. I used to get so stressed with not doing well in school, that my parents would be like, if you don't get in 100 and you don't cry, we're going to go to dinner and do something nice. You're going to get a gift. I would still not do it. I would get a 9.9 and be very upset. I think it's very much for me.