Building Like Ford – Gurhan Kiziloz’s Nexus on Track for $1.45B Revenue in 2025

Before the $400 million year, before Brazil’s gaming license came through, and before wider attention, Gurhan Kiziloz had already set a course for how Nexus would grow: without outside capital, without consultants, and with every key system developed internally. It’s a less common approach in a market shaped by funding rounds and headline-driven launches. But it has carried Nexus into serious territory, tracking toward $1.45 billion in revenue by the end of 2025.

The company runs on direct calls, fast decisions, and short loops. It’s a rhythm designed less for show and more for speed. “If something makes sense, we go,” Kiziloz has said. Teams are structured around clear outcomes. Most decisions don’t escalate, they move forward. The focus is on delivery, not discussion.

In some ways, the mindset isn’t new. It echoes an older model of company-building, closer to how Henry Ford pushed through repeated failures to eventually establish Ford Motor Company. Ford’s resolve bordered on stubbornness at times, but it was built around a single direction. Kiziloz’s path, while very different in industry and scale, carries a similar thread: steady execution, even when the payoff isn’t immediate.

Nexus’s entry into Brazil didn’t happen overnight. The license approval followed years of preparation, internal compliance work, and infrastructure buildout. It’s the kind of groundwork that rarely generates attention but is necessary when operating in regulated markets. By the time Brazil’s framework opened up, Nexus was already positioned to act.

Internally, the company avoids ceremony. Communication tends to be direct. Strategic ideas are surfaced, tested, and, if valid, quickly pushed into action. There’s no emphasis on reinventing anything. The goal is to function well and move with intent. Plans are rarely abstract. They’re tracked.

Nexus doesn’t style itself as a technology firm or aim to signal disruption. Its structure is closer to a focused operating unit, tuned to scale when the conditions are right and to pause when they’re not. New regions and areas are added when the groundwork is ready, not before.

In the absence of venture capital or external oversight, Nexus has also remained relatively opaque to the outside. But the numbers provide clarity: $400 million in 2024, a projected $1.45 billion in 2025. There are no roadshows or decks making the case. Just revenue.

That growth has come not through acceleration at all costs, but through a longer build. “Persistence beats resistance” is a line Kiziloz repeats often. Not as a motto, but as a reminder of what the pace of real construction looks like.