There’s a particular moment in Gurhan Kiziloz’s interview that lands heavier than most: “I don’t do anything apart from this.” It’s not a throwaway line. It’s a simple admission that his life, hour to hour, year to year, has become indistinguishable from the company he’s building. For some founders, that level of immersion is temporary, often driven by funding cycles or product launches. For Kiziloz, it appears to be the baseline.
As founder of Nexus International, Kiziloz has grown the company to $400 million in revenue without raising external capital, a decision that leaves him without investors, without dilution, and without many of the conventional off-ramps or buffers that come with shared ownership. The model gives him speed and control, but also total exposure. With a stated goal of reaching $1.45 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2025, the business is still in acceleration mode. So is he.
The decision to run a company without investors is strategic, but it also hints at a deeper instinct to maintain ownership, not just of shares, but of outcomes, mistakes, and direction. “We don’t need external investors,” he has said. Centralized control has become a defining feature of how Nexus operates—streamlined, fast-moving, and insulated from outside influence. It’s a system built on conviction, not consensus.
As Gurhan Kiziloz puts it, “We move fast. Really fast. No approvals, no politics, no waiting. If something makes sense, we go.” That clarity enables momentum, but it also means there’s no fallback if the bet goes wrong.
Steve Jobs once said, “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” Kiziloz would likely agree, though his perseverance appears less about endurance and more about immersion. Where other founders might view the business as a vehicle, Kiziloz treats it as a complete world, structured, fast-moving, and insulated from external distraction.
But that immersion has a cost. There’s a recurring theme in his interview: disconnection. He says he doesn’t reflect. He admits most people don’t understand his ambition. And while he talks openly about success, there’s little said about rest, or life outside of company metrics. This isn’t unique in the startup world; many founders operate under extreme intensity, but few state it so plainly.
His journey wasn’t linear. He speaks openly about repeated failures, including bankruptcy, and describes those moments not as setbacks but as formative recalibrations. “There isn’t one standout failure; there have been dozens,” he noted. In fact, he says he “enjoyed going broke,” a phrase that reads less like bravado and more like someone who has made peace with instability. It’s an unconventional stance, but it’s revealing: failure, for him, is not a stopping point, it’s the recalibration between sprints.
This rhythm, fail, rebuild, accelerate, isn’t just a business pattern; it becomes a mindset. Kiziloz seems to operate in a state of constant forward motion. “I don’t reflect; I just keep moving,” he said. This refusal to pause may explain why Nexus can grow quickly in emerging markets like Brazil, where its flagship gaming platform Megaposta has become a major revenue driver. It also suggests why the company favors action over long-term strategy documents. Kiziloz doesn’t wait for perfect plans. He executes, iterates, and moves.
This kind of leadership can yield results, but it also compresses the emotional experience of running a company. Jeff Bezos once said, “Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over.” In that sense, Kiziloz’s bias toward movement may serve a psychological function as much as a strategic one. Still, the absence of pause carries risk. In scaling a company, some challenges, particularly regulatory or structural, aren’t solved by speed alone.
There’s also a philosophical tension here. By building a company so closely tied to his own personality, decisions, and energy, Kiziloz risks creating something that may not easily outlive him, or function well in his absence. Founders who operate at this level of immersion often struggle with succession, not just structurally but emotionally. The company becomes an extension of self. Letting go, later, is rarely straightforward.
Yet for now, he appears unbothered by such long-term questions. His focus is on execution, revenue, and velocity. “I want to prove myself wrong,” he said. It’s an unusual motivation, less about outperforming critics and more about dismantling his own past doubts. There’s a certain emotional honesty in that framing: the climb isn’t for recognition, it’s for resolution.
In many ways, Kiziloz represents a version of entrepreneurship rarely shown in glossy profiles. He is not building a lifestyle brand, a media-friendly unicorn, or a pitch-perfect startup story. He’s building something harder to categorize: a business that functions as his entire life, designed for speed, shaped by failure, and run without brakes.
The question is whether that model can sustain itself over time, not just in revenue, but in rhythm. Can a company built in perpetual motion continue to scale without burning out the engine that drives it? For now, Gurhan Kiziloz keeps moving. And for now, work is still the only thing.