The industry has proven time and time again that open ecosystems win. Choosing projects to incubate is the same as building a hyper selective, siloed YC.
The YC model works because they admit 150+ companies every four months, knowing that only 2-3 will be potential winners. The cohort teams are meant to become one another’s first customers and pivot rapidly when early traction is flattening.
This is the complete opposite playbook to how Kalshi and most (now failed) L2s such as Bera and Megaeth have decided to operate. They will put out flashy marketing materials for months, build hype on X, and ultimately fall flat when they cannot scale past the existing bubble of users.
Once again, Polymarket will win for being Ethereum aligned and open for all to build on top of.
From the outside, Kalshi and Polymarket are taking different approaches to winning the prediction market space, each building its own distinct startup ecosystems
Polymarket is leaning into an open ecosystem model, encouraging more startups to build on top of its platform closer to a Hyperliquid style approach where the goal is scale through integrations.
Kalshi, on the other hand, is taking a selective and more controlled approach. Instead of broad ecosystem building, it focuses on owning stakes in the startups that build on Kalshi, curating which products get built. They complement this with strong branding through affiliates and by concentrating efforts on a narrower set of products rather than breadth.
It'll be interesting how both strategies will play out.
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