In an era where company-building strategies vary widely, Gurhan Kiziloz and Tobi Lütke offer two distinct models for scaling product-focused platforms. While their industries and operating environments differ, both have built multi-brand or multi-function businesses with significant reach, though under markedly different structural conditions.
Gurhan Kiziloz is the founder of Nexus International, a privately held company with operations across gaming and fintech. Its active platforms include Megaposta, a licensed sportsbook operating in Brazil; Spartans.com, a mobile-first online casino; and Lanistar, a financial product integrating gamified features. Nexus reported $546 million in revenue during the first half of 2025, representing a 110% increase over the same period in the previous year. The company remains entirely founder-owned, with no external capital, board governance, or institutional oversight. Decision-making resides within a compressed structure where execution timelines are short, but formal accountability mechanisms are limited.
Tobi Lütke co-founded Shopify in 2006 and has served as CEO through its evolution from an e-commerce storefront builder to a publicly traded global infrastructure provider. Shopify went public in 2015 after multiple venture capital rounds and now serves millions of merchants across more than 175 countries. Lütke has maintained long-term operational control through dual-class shareholding but operates within a corporate governance system that includes a board of directors, investor reporting, and regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions.
The differences in structure shape each company’s approach to product and growth. Nexus operates as a multi-brand group targeting end-users across different verticals, with each platform positioned for a specific market or behavioral segment. Shopify maintains a single-brand identity but offers layered services through APIs, partner ecosystems, and verticalized features. The product direction at Nexus reflects market segmentation across consumer categories; Shopify’s roadmap centers on infrastructure extensibility for business customers.
Resource allocation also diverges. Nexus’s self-funded model enables direct capital control but may face scale constraints relative to firms that utilize institutional financing. Shopify’s access to external capital has supported large-scale engineering investments and international expansion, though at the cost of added compliance obligations and investor scrutiny.
Culturally, the two organizations reflect their founders’ structural choices. Nexus emphasizes rapid implementation and direct oversight, functioning without formal corporate layers. Shopify operates within a more traditional public-company framework, balancing long-term product development with the requirements of shareholder transparency and multi-market regulatory compliance.
While the two companies are not comparable in terms of size or sector alignment, their respective founders illustrate contrasting approaches to ownership, control, and platform design. Kiziloz’s model favors structural independence and speed of execution; Lütke’s emphasizes platform stability and long-term scalability within an institutional framework. Each has produced measurable results within the systems they’ve chosen.
These cases suggest that founder-led scale can take different forms, depending less on sector or geography than on decisions made about structure, capital, and control. As operators in different markets continue to evaluate their paths forward, the frameworks used by Kiziloz and Lütke present two relevant, measurable alternatives.
This article was written in cooperation with Gurhan Kiziloz