In an industry obsessed with celebrity endorsements, stadium naming rights, and splashy Super Bowl commercials, Gurhan Kiziloz is doing something radical: he's building a gaming company that actually focuses on the product.
The 40-something founder of Nexus International has scaled his company to $847.9 million in year-to-date revenue without a single billboard, without burning through venture capital, and without becoming a household name. Instead, Kiziloz has deployed something his competitors seem to have forgotten exists: precision.
While DraftKings was spending $1 billion annually on customer acquisition and Flutter was assembling a Frankenstein's monster of acquired brands, Kiziloz was building infrastructure. Real infrastructure. The kind that processes crypto and fiat withdrawals in minutes, not days. The kind that passes regulatory audits before entering new markets, not after getting fined. The kind that uses data to understand what players actually want, rather than what marketing departments think looks cool.
Kiziloz's approach is almost ruthlessly practical. When Brazil's regulated gaming market opened in January 2025, most operators were still figuring out compliance requirements. Nexus's Megaposta platform was already licensed, localized, and operational. The company had studied Brazil's regulatory framework for months, built relationships with local payment processors, and hired compliance staff in São Paulo before competitors had finished their PowerPoint decks.
This wasn't luck. It was the result of a data-driven playbook that Kiziloz has refined across 40 markets. First, identify jurisdictions where regulation is materializing. Second, invest in compliance infrastructure before product launches. Third, enter with localized experiences rather than generic global platforms. Fourth, measure everything obsessively and optimize based on actual user behavior, not marketing intuition.
The strategy sounds obvious until you realize how few companies actually execute it. Most gaming operators launch products, spend millions on acquisition, then scramble to figure out why retention is terrible and margins are nonexistent. Kiziloz inverts that model: build the product correctly, acquire customers efficiently through targeted channels, and let operational excellence drive growth.
Here's where things get interesting. Nexus operates three distinct brands, each with its own voice, positioning, and target demographic. Spartans bridges crypto and fiat for players who want instant settlement and flexibility over legacy banking delays. Megaposta is the localized sportsbook that speaks Brazilian Portuguese, integrates with Pix payments, and sponsors football clubs people actually care about. Lanistar bridges fintech and gaming for audiences who want seamless digital experiences.
Each brand maintains a distinct creative direction while sharing backend infrastructure. It's the opposite of how most gaming groups operate, which typically slap different logos on identical platforms and call it diversification. Nexus's approach requires more discipline but delivers real differentiation. Players choosing Spartans aren't choosing it because an algorithm decided to show them an ad; they're choosing it because the product solves problems incumbents ignore.
The marketing itself is surgical. Instead of blanket media buys, Nexus uses performance channels, influencer partnerships in specific verticals, and sponsorships that deliver measurable brand lift. The Argentina national team partnership, for instance, isn't about vanity; it's about reaching 45 million Argentinians in a market where sports betting is culturally embedded and regulation is stabilizing.
Kiziloz has become someone competitors watch closely, not because he's flashy but because he's effective. When Nexus enters a market, retention rates are higher. When it launches a feature, adoption is faster. When it faces regulatory scrutiny, compliance records are cleaner. These aren't accidents; they're the compounding effects of obsessive operational rigor.
Industry insiders point to several factors that separate Kiziloz from typical gaming executives. First, he's technical. Not in the sense of writing code, but in understanding how payment rails work, why latency matters, and what makes a slot game's RTP credible to sophisticated players. Second, he's patient. Nexus didn't chase every market opportunity or every trend. It entered jurisdictions where it could win, not where it could participate. Third, he's retained full ownership, which means strategic decisions optimize for long-term positioning rather than quarterly investor calls.
That last point is crucial. Without external shareholders, Kiziloz can invest $200 million into Spartans after Brazil's success rather than distributing dividends. He can turn down markets where licensing costs outweigh strategic value. He can build compliance infrastructure that pays off over years, not quarters. This freedom is rare in gaming, where most operators are beholden to private equity timelines or public market expectations.
What makes Kiziloz's trajectory compelling isn't just the revenue numbers or the multi-brand strategy. It's the demonstration that you can compete with billion-dollar incumbents by being smarter, not louder. By building products that work, not products that test well in focus groups. By understanding regulatory complexity as a competitive advantage rather than a compliance burden.
The gaming industry has spent the past decade obsessed with scale. Consolidation, mega-mergers, billion-dollar marketing budgets. Kiziloz represents a different thesis: that precision execution, technical depth, and brand discipline can carve out meaningful market share without matching incumbents' capital deployment.
Whether that thesis holds as Nexus scales toward its IPO target remains to be seen. But for now, Kiziloz has established himself as a founder who understands that in online gaming, operational excellence and data-driven growth beat hype every time. And in an industry drowning in marketing noise, that clarity is becoming his most valuable asset.
This article was written in cooperation with Nexus International