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🦄 Unicorner Startup of the Week: Kalshi
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✍️ Notes From The Editors
Happy Monday! If you had fun holding $GME, you'll probably like this startup. All jokes aside, we think Kalshi is building a really cool platform. We hope you enjoy this issue—respond to this email if you want to see more companies like this!
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Trade on the outcome of events
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Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange that lets you trade on the outcome of financially significant events. Traders buy and sell “contracts” that are structured as yes-no questions about whether an event will happen (for example, “Will US greenhouse gas emissions increase this year?”). Getting started is simple: a user chooses an event, picks a position (Yes or No), and selects the number of contracts. The value of each contract varies based on demand. Once the event period is over, every correct position is awarded $1, and every incorrect position gets $0.
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💰 Business Model
Kalshi charges a small fee for every contract purchased. There are no monthly costs to access their platform.
📈 Traction and Fundraising
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Currently only offering early access to select users through a waitlist, available on their website
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Took part in Y Combinator W19 batch
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Raised $30 million Series A round with investors like Sequoia, SV Angel, and Charles Schwab
👫 Founder(s)
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Luana Lopes Lara: Previously Quant Trader @ Citadel, Researcher @ MIT CSAIL, SWE @ Bridgewater Associates, CS MEng @ MIT, CS & Math BS @ MIT
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Tarek Mansour: Currently Researcher @ MIT CSAIL; Previously Quant Trader @ Citadel, SWE @ Palantir, Analyst @ Goldman Sachs, EECS and Math BS @ MIT
🔮 Our Analysis
People often trade assets based on speculation. For example, if one assumes the price of oil is going to go up, they might buy shares in oil companies; however, an event’s occurrence and a company’s returns might not always align. Kalshi wants to give its users the ability to directly bet on those events as opposed to making investments in loosely associated companies. This way, investors have more control over their returns. With the growing popularity of online stock and options trading platforms, it’s also very timely. Kalshi is simple to use, given that users only have the option to buy a contract answering yes or no to a question. There’s definitely a lot in store for Kalshi once it’s released to the public.
📚 Further Reading
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Made with 💜 by the Unicorner Team 🦄
Comments? Just reply to this email!
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🎁 Bonus Content!
You may have heard about NFTs online recently. If you’re still confused about how they work (or why anyone would pay millions of dollars for one), check out this recent article from Business Insider. |
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