Clients call me the father of this industry. Here's my story.

I never embraced the conventional path: grinding away at a 9 to 5 job for the next 45 years, only to retire on a modest pension while still asking my boss for permission to take a vacation. Three or four weeks of "freedom" per year? No thanks. Life, I believed, should be about real autonomy not politely waiting for someone else to approve how I spend my time.

So I started searching for a better way. My very first Google query was the wonderfully naïve "make money online." A few clicks later, I stumbled across forex trading. That was the moment the spark ignited.

Fueled by pure optimism (and zero knowledge), I opened a demo futures account and dove into manual trading. Let's just say my early results were... educational. I made zero profits mostly because my idea of risk management was "let's see what happens," and my position sizing strategy could best be described as "whatever feels right."

I kept my day job, of course, but the dream had already sunk its hooks in. I couldn't stop thinking about "printing money" from the markets. How hard could it be? Just click a few buttons and watch the account grow while sipping coffee on a beach, right?

Of course, as I would painfully discover over the years, becoming a consistently profitable trader is about as easy as herding cats in a hurricane. That first spark, however, was undeniable and it marked the true beginning of my journey.

Manual trading quickly turned into a source of constant frustration. I would enjoy a few winning periods, only to watch them vanish in a spectacular emotional meltdown. The result was an exhausting rollercoaster that left me feeling like I was making zero real progress.

The silver lining? I finally identified the main culprit: my own emotions. So I decided to dust off my IT bachelor degree and put it to better use than the soul crushing programmer job I once had at a bank. This time, I would build something that actually served me.

I started developing automated trading strategies designed to remove human emotion entirely from the process. The dream was simple: create a system that could execute rules consistently and finally deliver the profitability that had eluded me. For a while, it felt like the perfect solution. I imagined myself sipping a Piña colada on a beach while my flawless robot traders did all the hard work.

Of course, I would later learn that even in algorithmic trading, emotions remain the number one reason most traders still fail, usually when they cannot resist the urge to tinker with a perfectly good system. But at that moment, things were finally looking up. My backtests showed real promise, and I was convinced I had found the right path forward.

By this point, I had already ditched my programming career and spent the last few years working as a sales guy. I began as a door to door salesperson, which took my painfully introverted self and somehow turned me into a more confident, outspoken version of me. After climbing the ladder a bit, I was selling windows and doors for a bigger Belgian company (yes, I graduated from selling mobile contracts door to door, to selling the actual doors. Career progression at its finest).

Yet every spare minute was still spent obsessively coding and backtesting trading systems, desperately hunting for the holy grail (which, of course, does not exist, but every young dreamer needs a quest).

I slowly realized my day job was holding me back. My big dream could not keep waiting for my boss to grant me permission to work on it. So I made a truly drastic move: I quit my job, sold my car, moved back into my parents house (yes, the attic, like a true cliché), and went full throttle on building the one system that would print money while I slept.

I was 33 years old at the time. You can imagine how thrilled my parents were with these life changing decisions. Their faces said it all, somewhere between "What are you doing with your life?" and "Please do not turn the attic into a trading cave."

But I was determined, and I could not care less what anyone thought. It was either this or keep wondering "what if" for the rest of my life.

Looking back, it was hands down the best decision I ever made. From that moment on, life started changing in drastic and beautiful ways.

After a full year of going all in, I still had no stable, consistently profitable system despite years of coding and testing. Cash reserves were running dangerously low, and doubt began whispering in my ear: "Is this dream even possible, or am I just fooling myself?"

Then, one night, it happened. I had an actual dream (not the usual kind about showing up late to an exam in my underwear, but a useful one). In the dream, I saw a simple principle: if a train is moving in one direction, it does not just stop and instantly reverse. My brain luckily translated this into trading logic: "If price starts moving strongly in one direction, it is more likely to continue for a while."

I woke up in the middle of the night, scribbled the idea down like a mad scientist, and went back to sleep. The next morning I was buzzing with excitement and immediately started coding. And just like that, my first Volatility Breakout system was born. I named it "Pipspeed."

Months later I discovered it was actually a well known strategy, but at the time I thought I had invented fire. It quickly became my first system that showed genuine live trading potential and real profits. After thorough optimization and robustness testing, I launched it live. It performed beautifully for more than two years and truly marked the beginning of my transformation into a profitable trader.

I published it on MQL5, where it became a bestseller. Finally, my cash flow turned positive. I still remember that sweet "Finally!" feeling washing over me. From that point on, my longtime dream no longer felt like a fantasy. It felt achievable.

All the work ethic and determination I had built over the previous fifteen years finally found their true purpose, anchored into my core system. I learned one of the most important lessons of my life: to become successful at something, you simply refuse to accept failure as an option.

By 2019, things had come a long way since Pipspeed. I had developed multiple top ranked products on MQL5 and finally discovered my true trading love: breakout systems. That was when I decided to make it official and founded Profalgo Limited. What began as one guy coding in his spare time slowly turned into a recognized brand known for honest, proven trading robots.

I chose to swim against the tide. The MQL5 marketplace was overflowing with grid and martingale systems that basically screamed "come lose your money in style!" Many developers seemed far more talented at creating seductive marketing videos than at creating systems that survived real market conditions. I took a different approach: I built Expert Advisors primarily for myself. And if they happened to sell well, that was just a very nice bonus.

The more I tested other EAs on the market, the more I realized something funny, in a slightly depressing way. Real robustness was rarer than a profitable martingale account in a trending market. I started to see that there simply weren't many developers out there doing it the same way I was. My clients noticed it too.

So I made a firm decision: I would become "the honest trader", the guy who actually tells you the truth, even when it is not wrapped in rainbows and Lamborghinis. Trading is hard. Brutally hard. You need to evolve into a completely different human being than your average 9 to 5 coworker if you want to succeed. Algorithmic trading is no different. Your emotions will still try to sabotage you, they just do it through the "temptation to tweak the settings" button now.

This mindset eventually pushed me to start sharing more of my experience and knowledge. That decision would later grow into a vibrant community and regular blog posts on my website. The journey had evolved once again, it was no longer only about building better systems. It was about helping others avoid the same painful (and occasionally hilarious) mistakes I had made.

We have now reached 2024. In the past few years I launched Luna AI, Daytrade Pro, and Goldtrade Pro. Then, at the beginning of 2024, I released what quickly became my all time favourite Expert Advisor: The Gold Reaper. It turned into a massive success in terms of performance, robustness, and very happy clients.

By this point, one truth had become crystal clear: running a diversified portfolio of several of my EAs delivered far more consistent results than pinning all my hopes on any single system. So I started applying this approach across multiple accounts. Before long, I was managing more than 20 live trading accounts, each with different setups, risk levels, and currency pairs.

This portfolio style did something almost magical. It not only improved overall performance but almost completely removed the emotional rollercoaster. When you are monitoring over 20 accounts, you finally stop obsessively refreshing one single equity curve like a nervous parent waiting for exam results. The nerves? They actually started to behave.

Around the same time, my Darwinex account, which I had started years earlier, began attracting serious attention. By simply running a steady combination of three to four of my own EAs, it started winning significant fund allocations in their competitions. In the following years that account would receive more than four million dollars in fund allocations and land me in Darwinex all time top 20 traders. Because they liked my non grid, non martingale style, they even invited me for a one on one interview to discuss my trading approach.

Life had genuinely changed for the better. My EAs were consistently top ranked on MQL5, and I started receiving serious collaboration offers from other companies.

On a personal level, the transformation was even more meaningful. My wife and I now had two beautiful kids, and thanks to the freedom my trading business provided, we could actually be present and create wonderful memories with them instead of being stuck in an office box from 9-to-5.

One ordinary morning during a run, a song from my old Spotify playlist came on: the exact one I used to play while daydreaming about the life I wanted. In that moment it hit me like a freight train: I had actually done it. I had built the exact life I once only dared to dream about. All because I took that scary step many years ago and went all in. A huge wave of gratitude washed over me. I will admit it... a few manly tears may have escaped on that run.

For the first time, all the pieces of the puzzle had finally clicked together.

And then, naturally, the next dangerous question popped into my head: "What's next?"

So here we are, today. More than 27 products released under the Profalgo brand. Many of them receiving genuine praise from experienced traders who now refuse to use anything else. One of the best decisions I ever made was launching my own trading community on Discord. It has grown into a fantastic bunch of like minded people who motivate each other daily and even build clever tools to make my EAs even better. There is something truly uplifting about surrounding yourself with positive, ambitious individuals who share the same dreams and are actually willing to put in the work instead of just spamming "moon" emojis.

The greatest reward of all is still hearing from clients who are genuinely succeeding with my systems, whether on their personal accounts, with prop firms, or on Darwinex. Some even started selling their own apps based on the usage of one of my products. Hearing those success stories never get old. They are basically free dopamine hits.

That dangerous question that hit me during my teary eyed morning run... "What's next?", continues to echo.

I still have several clear goals ahead. My inner obsession with creating the perfect trading system has never faded. I know there is no holy grail (if there was, someone would have already sold it to you for only $97 with a 300 percent win rate), but with modern technology and AI, building truly outstanding products has become so much easier. So why not go all in and push the limits?

Another major goal is to grow the community further and share more in depth knowledge about my personal journey and approach to algorithmic trading. I have seen how it completely changed my life, and I would love to help it change many others for the better. Of course I can only speak about what worked for me. Everyone must find their own path, but a bit of honest guidance can save years of expensive and occasionally hilarious mistakes.

And finally, perhaps the most important goal of all: to truly enjoy life itself. To spend real quality time with family and friends. In the end, everything we do is about gaining the financial and time freedom to be with the people we love. Money makes life much easier, but the best moments are usually the simplest ones, joking around with friends until your stomach hurts, driving a convertible through the Swiss mountains (because boys never really grow up, they just upgrade to more expensive toys), watching your kids do ridiculously stupid things and somehow learn from them, or quietly sharing a sunset with your soulmate.

That is what the entire journey has always been about.