“At its heart, what we are creating are structures that help humans be better. We are seeing people transform their lives not only from a financial perspective, but also in their relationships and health.”- Zack van Niekerk.

We are excited to welcome Zack van Niekerk, Founder@ The Trading Café. We hear their founder’s story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights. Let’s begin…

Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you tell us a little about yourself, your
background, and what you do today?

I’m originally from South Africa, although I spent most of my childhood in the UK. Today, I am the CEO of a trading education company, The Trading Café. My role is more like a headmaster than a CEO. Day to day, my job is to develop education structures that help people learn to trade the financial markets with success.

What does The Trading Café do? Who do you serve, where are you based, and how can people engage with your product or service today?

The Trading Café teaches people how to trade the financial markets. We are an online
institution based all over the world. Students connect with us through our education hub, where
they can learn through structured education and gain access to genuine traders who show them
how to trade the financial markets with success.

We believe that in order to build genuine wealth, you need to know how to invest. And the
investment options available are not that many. Trading is one of the highest-return investment
mechanisms you can be involved in. So what we do is teach people who want to dramatically
build their wealth through trading how to do that, whether they have $10,000 in the bank or $10
million.

How did you start The Trading Café?

We started it for three reasons. First, there was a need and a gap in the market for general trading education. For the last decade or so, the financial education sector, when it comes to trading, has not served people well.

Second, we realized there was an opportunity to fill that gap. Third, we had access to a world class team capable of doing it. So we decided to take the leap and make it happen.

What values shape your decision-making as a founder?

The core value that is always at the forefront of our decisions is: what is best for the student. First and foremost, we are an education institution, and our mission is to help people actually learn. Whenever it comes to making a decision about what we’re going to do or what direction we’re going to take, everything pivots around how we can help our students learn better, more efficiently, and faster.

At its heart, what we are creating are structures that help humans be better. And we are seeing people transform their lives not only from a financial perspective, but also in their relationships and health. We help people across all of those spectrums, and that is the value that drives every decision we make.

What sets your approach or product apart from the rest?

We put our students and our education first and give a huge amount of value. Although we are a business and we do want to generate profit, our mission, first and foremost, is to help people learn. We believe that if we actually help people learn and improve their lives, more people will want to come to us and the business will be successful.

We also work with multiple traders rather than one methodology. We have seven instructors, each with a different approach to trading the financial markets. We’ve created structured education around what they do and converted that into curriculums people can study in a systematic way. In total, we’ve converted over 80 years of knowledge of trading the financial markets into structured curriculums that anyone can follow.

Another thing that sets us apart is that we focus heavily not just on what people need to know, but on what they actually need to do. We place a strong emphasis on execution rather than simply accumulating random pieces of information and knowledge.

From start to finish, everything within The Trading Café environment is action-oriented. As a result, we see people who come in with zero knowledge of trading progress to a point where they not only understand the concepts but also have the ability to start trading with skill after as little as one and a half to two months.

We have had some great milestones over the last few years. First finding genuine traders who had the ability to trade was a massive first step; second, converting their knowledge into structured courses people could study. We’ve been operating for three years; the first two and a half focused on building the courses and curriculums and establishing the systems to help our students. Now we’re seeing the benefits: on average, six students per week go from not knowing how to trade to trading the live markets. That is a by-product of the first two and a half years of structural work to create these courses and set up the education infrastructure.

What trends, behaviours, or shifts are you seeing in your industry that others may not be talking about yet?

We’re seeing a big shift away from hype and toward people wanting to learn properly. For years,
people were inundated with hype and propaganda from education providers promising they

could become millionaires in a day. People are getting out of tune with that social-media-driven
hype and becoming more clued up about what it really takes to build wealth over the long term.
When people approach learning to trade properly, they make far greater progress. We see
students who’ve gone in circles for ten years make more progress in three months in a
structured environment than they did in the previous ten years. That shift is going to have a real
impact on the industry.

In your experience, what is the biggest opportunity to change the future of the business in your sector right now?

I think people in general need to get ready for an extreme change with the advent of AI and the
way it is going to reshape the economic and employment landscape. As education providers,
part of our responsibility is to ensure that our students are prepared for those changes. That
means helping them make sound decisions about how they earn money and how they invest
their money long term.

We are shifting into a place where we not only teach people how to trade, but also trade for
others. Because our education system creates profitable traders, we recently received our FCA
license in the UK, which allows us to trade on behalf of clients. This means that if someone
wants to learn how to trade, they can do that with us, or they can invest their money with us and
we will trade for them.

For anyone who wants to get to know us more, we have a free school with over 50,000
members and hundreds of hours of educational material. All the details are available at our
website: thetrading.cafe.

Looking three to five years ahead, how do you see AI technology changing the industry, and how are you preparing for that future?

AI is here to stay, and it has already been heavily used within the trading industry. Institutions
use algorithmic trading and will continue to do so. However, what AI cannot eliminate are
market movements and sentiment. As long as those exist, the trading industry remains future-
proof. If you are able to identify movement in the market, then you are able to trade—whether
you use AI or not.

That’s why I believe trading is an incredibly strong skill that can future-proof people through this
transitionary period as AI continues to develop. At The Trading Cafe, we don’t use AI to replace
people, but to enhance their abilities. The most important future-proof skill people will need is
the ability to discern and act on vast amounts of data. AI can help facilitate that, but our goal
and mission remain the same: to make people better, not to replace them.

We’ve created an AI support tool called TAL. It’s designed to help people learn to trade, to
support them while they are actively trading, and to guide them toward becoming world-class
students and traders. It doesn’t replace the individual—it enhances them.

Beyond TAL, we are actively looking at ways to promote AI within our education system to help
students trade better. However, we are strong advocates that students must first build a
foundation of knowledge, discipline, and understanding before relying on AI. If people skip that
and use AI only to “copy and paste,” they remove themselves from the process. Our approach is
to ensure that AI strengthens the student rather than replaces them.

For anyone looking to break into your industry or progress in their career, what advice would you give based on your experience as a founder?

Our industry is education, and if someone wants to start teaching, the first thing they need to do is become good at learning themselves. The only way you can truly help other people learn is by understanding the mechanisms of learning and being able to apply them in your own life.

That means being able to start and finish learning a skill to a very high standard. If you can do that, and if you understand the processes that allowed you to reach that level, then you are in a position to help others do the same.

So the best advice I can give is: become good at learning. Learning is the foundation of education. If you can learn well, there’s a far greater chance that you will be able to teach well.

What three tools make your business run better, and why are they essential to your early success?

We run an enterprise with a large number of students and a team of 40 people, which means we need to be highly organized in everything we do.

The first tool we rely on is a very simple system for tracking numbers and to-dos on a weekly basis. This covers both student progress and business operations. Without it, we would be walking blind, so it’s absolutely essential.

The second tool is Slack. Because our team is spread all over the world, seamless communication is vital. Slack allows us to stay connected, share updates instantly, and work together as if we were in the same room.

The third tool is Google Suite. It provides the infrastructure we need to educate people in a way that is both simple and highly effective. The vast majority of our educational material—and much of our internal tracking—runs through Google Suite.

For anyone looking to progress in your industry or start a business, what advice would you give based on your experience as a founder?

If I were to give advice to another founder, it would be this: your job is to get over problems and barriers. The better you are at solving problems and sticking to your vision without giving up, the more successful you will be.

For someone thinking about starting a business, my advice is to do what I did: attach yourself to successful entrepreneurs. Become their most trusted and valued employee, their right hand man or woman, and help them make their business incredible. By doing this first, you will learn all the skills you need to become an entrepreneur yourself.

At the same time, if you are prudent with your money and accumulate capital while being a strong partner and employee to an existing entrepreneur, eventually an opportunity will present itself for you to start your own business. When that moment comes, you must say yes, go all in, and make it happen.

“Thank you Zack van Niekerk, it has been great learning more about your leadership story and The Trading Café.”

To learn more about The Trading Café, Visit: The Trading Café

Want to connect with Zack van Niekerk? Check out their Social Media Profile  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zackvanniekerk

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