Lon Boonen

Bio

Salar is born in Syria to parents who are political refugees from Iraq. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Bulgaria, which gives al-Khafaji the unusual distinction of being a Syrian-born Iraqi whose first language was Bulgarian. He doesn’t speak the language anymore, but he was since picked up English and Dutch, as well as speaking Arabic. Al-Khafaji did most of his schooling in Amsterdam, where his family moved after his father got a professorship at the University of Amsterdam. At university, the self-taught programmer, who has been coding since he was nine, studied physics. Silk is his second startup. He also founded another structured-content company, called Xopus, which was acquired in 2010 by customer experience management company SDL.