The ex-ballerina betting big on prediction markets
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Meet the Founders, we meet Luana Lopes Lara, creator of Kalshi, a prediction markets startup that allows users to trade on the outcome of real-world events - from inflation and interest rates to elections and geopolitics.
Kalshi drew attention for showing Zohran Mamdani as a favourite in the NYC mayoral race, as prediction markets gain traction as political barometers. But the wider industry has also faced scrutiny: a trader on rival platform Polymarket reportedly made nearly half a million dollars betting on the capture of Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro before it was announced.
The controversy around prediction markets has placed Lopes Lara and her company at the centre of a growing regulatory and ethical debate in the US. In this episode, the Brazilian founder explains how the discipline and resilience of ballet has shaped her approach to building a business, and why she believes markets can often forecast the future better than experts.
(First broadcast/podcast on 06 February 2026)
If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Sam Fenwick Producer: Amber Mehmood Sound mix: Toby James
(Picture: Luana Lara Lopes, founder and Chief Operating Officer of Kalshi.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hi, I'm Sam Fenwick and this is Meet the Founders from Business Daily on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.8 | This is where we speak to innovators from around the world about the ideas, the risks and the realities of starting a business. |
| 0:22.4 | This week, a billionaire founder whose company allows users to speculate on real-world outcomes. |
| 0:29.4 | My guest is betting big on the business of prediction markets, an area of finance that's |
| 0:35.8 | attracted intense scrutiny from regulators, |
| 0:39.1 | an unlikely career change for someone who began as a professional ballerina. |
| 0:44.0 | Combining how a young guy was, at the time, I was a teenager, with the physical side and the |
| 0:48.5 | psychological side was pretty hard, but also made in comparison everything later on in my |
| 0:53.1 | life a lot easier. |
| 0:54.2 | Here how she built the company, why she believes markets can sometimes tell us more than the |
| 0:59.3 | experts, and how she responds to critics who say prediction markets blur the lines between |
| 1:05.5 | finance and gambling. It's a journey that's made her one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires. |
| 1:12.8 | That's Luana Lopez-Lara, our founder this week. |
| 1:20.0 | We start at the Bolshoi Theatre School, one of the world's most demanding ballet academies, |
| 1:30.0 | and the only institution outside Russia to carry the Bolshoi name. |
| 1:34.9 | This is where Brazilian-born Luana Lopez-Lara's professional life begins. |
| 1:40.2 | The training program is famously tough, with days that stretch from early morning academic classes through to long evenings of ballet. |
| 1:49.1 | For Luana, it would become one of the most grueling periods of her life. |
| 1:54.0 | I used to practice eight hours a day, and your joints, your bones, your muscles are just in a lot of pain for a lot of things. |
| 2:00.3 | But the other side, there are very few roles. There are very few places that you can work at, and a lot of girls work very hard. So it's just a very, very competitive environment. Ballet is like there's few spots and you just need to get one spot. So I think combining how a young guy was at the time. I was a teenager with the physical side and the psychological side was pretty hard, |
| 2:18.5 | but also made in comparison everything later on in my life a lot easier. |
... |
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