Kalshi co-founder credits flat structure for scaling without the bureaucracy

Most startups that hire aggressively end up with more meetings, not more momentum. Kalshi says it has dodged that trap. Speaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit in Santa Barbara, California, Kalshi co-founder and COO Luana Lopes Lara said the prediction market has scaled its workforce by avoiding formal hierarchies altogether. The timing matters. One analyst says the company could soon be worth as much as $42 billion, which makes its management choices a lot more interesting than the average org chart. No middle managers, no problem (so far) Lara’s diagnosis of growing companies is blunt. As headcount climbs, she argued, the real enemy is the pileup of new meetings, approval requests and red tape that comes with it. Kalshi’s employee count grew from roughly 35-40 people to 150-170 in approximately one year. Of its 170 employees, approximately 130 report directly to Lara and fellow co-founder Tarek Mansour. The growth that makes the org chart matter The CFTC-regulated platform, established in 2018, saw its valuation climb from $5 billion in late 2025 to an estimated $22 billion by mid-2026. That is more than a fourfold jump in a short window. The company is also reportedly i...