Polymarket overhauls marketing, hires Bird's VanderZanden
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- Polymarket hired Travis VanderZanden, founder of E-Scooter startup Bird and former Uber and Lyft executive, as chief growth officer; he will also oversee the company's marketing function.
- Polymarket's marketing overhaul follows a Wall Street Journal investigation alleging misleading promotional campaigns and a subsequent Commodity Futures Trading Commission probe; the company has restructured its marketing team, updated partner guidelines, and retained consulting firm AlixPartners to monitor partner content.
- Megan McGrath, formerly of Robinhood, joined as chief compliance officer of Polymarket's U.S. exchange, while Natalie Oblazny, formerly at Coinbase, now heads regulatory affairs for the domestic platform.
- Shana Bautista, a former FBI official who worked at Coinbase, was hired as global head of investigations and intelligence, and Paul Jordan joined from Nasdaq as chief risk officer for Polymarket U.S.
- Polymarket's U.S. exchange debuted in May and operates separately from its international market.
- Prediction-market platforms expect the September NFL kickoff and the November midterm elections to drive a fall trading-volume surge after activity dipped following the World Cup's July conclusion.
Why it matters: Polymarket is simultaneously answering a federal regulator and scaling for a seasonal traffic spike: it has hired compliance, regulatory, risk, and investigations leaders from Robinhood, Coinbase, Nasdaq, and the FBI in the same window it is rebuilding marketing practices that triggered a CFTC probe, ahead of NFL-season and election-cycle volume that platforms say will define the fall.
Ask SkimNews
