From 70 Failures to $400M: What Gurhan Kiziloz Learned by Not Stopping

By traditional entrepreneurial standards, Gurhan Kiziloz has little in common with the archetype of the meticulously analytical, data-driven founder. As the CEO of Nexus International, a digital gaming company that brought in $400 million in revenue in 2024, Kiziloz attributes much of his success to something less conventional: relentless action in the face of repeated failure.

“There isn’t one failure,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s about 42. Maybe 60 or 70, actually.” The comment wasn’t flippant. It was a reflection of a worldview in which mistakes are neither turning points nor teaching moments; they are simply steps.

This style of iteration without reflection underpins much of Nexus’s rise. Founded without external capital, the company scaled rapidly, particularly through its digital gaming platform Megaposta, which gained early traction in Brazil. Today, Nexus is aiming for $1.45 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2025, without ever raising money from outside investors.

For Kiziloz, the question of failure is largely irrelevant. “I don’t reflect,” he said. “I just keep moving. Reflecting on something that’s gone wrong, I don’t have time for that.” That forward motion is not just personal ethos; it’s company policy. Decisions at Nexus are made quickly. Layers of review are replaced by instinct, and timelines are condensed into whatever pace execution allows.

This approach raises questions: Is constant iteration a viable long-term strategy? Can success be sustained without structured postmortems, analysis, and correction?

In many ways, Kiziloz’s approach resembles that of early-stage founders operating under tight constraints, except he continues to lead this way at a $400 million scale. It’s an execution philosophy built on immediacy, where the magnitude of correct decisions outweighs the volume of incorrect ones. “Those few right moments are so big, they wipe out all the wrongs,” he noted.

This bias toward action over introspection may resonate with a certain generation of operators increasingly skeptical of corporate formality. It rejects the notion that success comes from reducing risk and favors an approach where outcomes are skewed by speed and audacity.

Yet while this “keep moving” philosophy has clearly worked for Kiziloz so far, it comes with implications.

Internally, it requires a workforce that can operate under high pressure and low structure. Nexus’s growth has been described by employees as fast, chaotic, and exhilarating, but not necessarily predictable. “Not everyone is designed to take a ride in a rocketship,” Kiziloz admitted.

Externally, it puts the company in a unique position. Without investors or a board to answer to, Nexus operates without conventional oversight, but also without institutional support should things go sideways. The same structure that fuels independence also concentrates risk at the top.

And at the top sits a founder who, by his own admission, does not engage in strategic retrospection. In place of retrospectives or quarterly reviews, there’s instinct and repetition. When asked about whether he feels pressure being solely responsible for the company’s direction, Kiziloz’s response was stark: “If it fails, I start again.”

It is an unorthodox brand of leadership, but not an unfounded one. Silicon Valley has long lionized “fail fast” culture, though often within environments padded by investor capital. What makes Kiziloz different is that he has scaled without that cushion, and without subscribing to the introspective rituals that often follow failure in venture-backed firms.

His model echoes aspects of other contrarian founders. Like Elon Musk’s readiness to absorb risk personally or Richard Branson’s preference for instinct over convention, Kiziloz represents a type of leadership that places velocity over consensus. But he stops short of positioning himself as a visionary. There’s little in the way of grand narrative. No talk of disruption or long-term roadmaps. Just action, execution, and the belief that enough forward steps will eventually chart the right course.

Still, Nexus’s trajectory suggests that this form of founder-led momentum can produce tangible results. The $400 million milestone was not achieved through perfect planning but through relentless motion. Whether that motion can carry the company to its $1.45 billion target remains an open question.

What is clear, however, is that Gurhan Kiziloz has bet on a model where failure is not feared, avoided, or deeply examined. It’s just expected, and outrun.