Tarek Mansour is the 25 year old co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, America's first federally regulated exchange where you can trade on events, just like you would a stock or a commodity. During his time at Goldman Sachs, Tarek was set to help clients hedge their investments during Brexit, but there was no direct way to do it. In 2018, he started Kalshi with fellow MIT classmate Luana Lopes Lara. After three years of work, they got approved by the CFTC and made history. Kalshi’s list of investors include Y Combinator, Alfred Lin at Sequoia, Charles Schwab, Ali Partovi of Neo, and Co-founder of KKR Henry Kravis. In this episode, Tarek talks to host Sabrina Halper about his experience working to change US legislation to legalize future markets, how different founders in his circle approach fundraising, his advice for other entrepreneurs building in highly regulated areas, and his views on all types of things, including manifesting, receiving advice, and which technological innovations are most exciting.   

Please like & subscribe! Reach out to Shalper@hofcapital.com with any feedback, requests for guests, or if you're building something to shape the future ❤️ .     

Engage with HOF on Twitter: @HOFCapital and at HOFCapital.com.

Follow Tarek’s journey: @mansourtarek_. 

Connect with Sabrina: @SabrinaHalper. 

Timecodes: 

0:00 - Intro 

0:50 - Early life, MIT, learning CS, working in finance 

3:45 - Inception story of Kalshi 

6:00 - Pitching YC hackathon & winning 

7:58 - What Kalshi does and who its built for 

10:00 - Why Kalshi ISN'T a gambling website 

10:30 - History of grain futures 

11:47 - The events that Kalshi CAN'T put on the platform 

12:27 - How to prevent people from manipulating events  14:30 - Why Tarek believes the markets predict better than experts 

16:10 - Kalshi's approach to building in a highly regulated industry 19:11 - Advice for other companies building in highly regulated spaces, working with SEC and CFTC 

21:42 - Tarek's view into how crypto will be regulated 

23:00 - Fundraising from YC, Ali Partovi, Justin Mateen before receiving regulatory approval 

25:40 - Competition 27:24 - Putting midterm elections on Kalshi 

30:14 - Misconception of being a young founder 

32:50 - Best advice Tarek has been given  

35:20 - What Tarek would be doing if he wasn't building Kalshi 

36:05 - Most surprising thing about Tarek  

36:40 - What's most exciting about the future: longevity, nuclear fusion, carbon transformation 

39:46 - Who would Tarek like to see on Tomorrow Talk next: Alex from Deel, Tony from DoorDash