Mari Tkachova

CRO | Revenue & retention for real-money products | Co-founder, | Applying iGaming’s retention playbook to prediction markets

[Mari Tkachova @maritkachova]

Kalshi CEO: aligning incentives so you profit when users win, not lose.

This is the retention principle iGaming spent a decade fighting against — house edge vs. player lifetime value — and Kalshi is building the model we always said was more sustainable.

[Brian Halligan @bhalligan]

🚨 NEW EPISODE DROP with @Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour

My conversation with the founder who built a $22B prediction market empire by staring straight at the fire.

What he and co-founder @luanalopeslara have built, the "future of truth," is nothing short of extraordinary.

This episode has some of the most unfiltered lessons on chaos, focus, and founder DNA from one of the sharpest operators I have seen. We talk about:

• Fixing the “hole in the ship” daily and the one existential leak that can sink you
• Annual roadmaps are dead
• Realigning every 30-60 days
• Obsessing over the last 10%
• Designing co-founder disagreement as a feature
• Companies win by betting on asymmetric moves
• Aligning incentives so you profit when users win, not lose

00:00 The 'Everything' Exchange
01:18 Co-CEO roles at Kalshi
03:04 Disagreeing by Design
06:43 Beirut Roots and Risk
10:23 Entrepreneurial Literacy
13:37 Chaos as a Strategy
26:52 Desert Years and Never Pivoting
32:15 Weekend Work Rhythm
32:38 Founder Grind Culture
33:08 Scaling Past 150
34:40 Perfectionist Marketing
36:09 Timing The Zeitgeist
40:19 Suing The Government
47:56 Going Mainstream
51:25 Trading Vs Gambling Debate
59:08 Founder Advice

Links to the full episode in the comments 👇

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

Ukrainian decathlete Volodymyr Androshchuk will not be representing his country at the Paris Olympics because he was just killed by the Russian armed forces. In other news, the IOC announces that Russian athletes are welcome in Paris.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Without additional weaponry, this war will become an endless bloodbath, spreading misery, suffering, and destruction. Mariupol, Bucha, Kramatorsk – the list will be continued. Nobody will stop Russia except Ukraine with Heavy Weapons. #ArmUkraineNow