Will Jones
Before Shawki Sukar ever worked in Silicon Valley, he learned how to build around absence. Electricity cut out. Internet crawled. Progress depended on whatever happened to work that day. Growing up in Aleppo, Syria, those limits weren’t abstract constraints. They shaped how he learned, tested ideas, and how much patience was required for endeavors like the Simpli DeFi project. By his mid-teens, Sukar was already building software for schools, including early learning systems and audio tools meant to function in unstable conditions. He also wrote a series of blog posts in the Farcaster community.
That work didn’t stop when he left Syria. It followed him into early engineering roles abroad and eventually into a move to the United States in 2023. In different settings, the problems changed, but the work stayed similar: building systems where structure was still being invented. He approaches technology as something to be shaped by context, not detached from it.
Sukar sat down to offer some insight into his history and process.
What are some notable highlights in your life?
Shawki Sukar: I was an Ethereum Foundation Scholar. When I was 15, I built Syria’s first learning management system for high schools and middle schools, and built an audiobook app for schools. At 16, I got my first job in a company outside of Syria, at wizme.com. I helped redesign the development and engineering processes, guiding the transition to Agile methodology. I also built custom AWS libraries that streamlined file and record uploads, and I developed a microservice to manage the complex logic of booking conference rooms, hotel rooms, and similar resources.
At 17, I led a protocols engineering course that was backed by Consensys, and worked directly with the University of Toronto’s Professor Andreas Veneris and Zissis Poulos on developing a DeFi investment system that allows financial investors to invest in different asset pools across multiple crypto chains. My work involved writing smart contracts on the Conflux chain, doing cross-chain development, and building a UI system that interacts with major crypto protocols and assets. The project received a grant from the Conflux Network (a blockchain startup backed by Sequoia). When I was 18, I was the founding engineer at AirGraph, a Village Global-backed company. While I was there, I developed a platform that integrated messaging, calendars, and docs in one place. I worked on real-time system engineering and document editing, as well as enterprise-access level control.
I also worked directly with a professor at King Saud University on blockchain research projects. At Primer, I worked on social features to drive user engagement and retention, and I built the first application on top of the Farcaster protocol.
What is your personal story? How did you begin, and where are you now?
I grew up in Aleppo, Syria, watching American movies and documentaries about the West, and I always wanted to move there. I watched a documentary series about Silicon Valley when I was 10 and decided I wanted to work in tech.
At 15, I started learning to code with a 20 KB internet connection and used an old car battery to charge my laptop because we didn’t have electricity most of the day. When I was 18, I moved to Turkey and took two gap years to work remotely as a software engineer to save money for college.
What inspired you to start your business and become involved in this industry?
When it comes to crypto, the Internet felt like a free virtual state to me. It was accessible even while living under a totalitarian regime in Syria. The Internet provided open access to information for anyone, and blockchains provided financial freedom for anyone, anywhere. For decentralized social networks, I was heavily interested in what went wrong on the Internet and the major promises of the Internet, like interoperability, decentralization, and permissionless innovation, disappeared. Decentralized protocols like Farcasters offered a new possibility for these premises.
As far as education, I think there’s a lot of potential in resolving the current institutional crisis in education through software. With regards to enterprise software, I think people underestimate how much enterprise software shapes the way people work.
What lessons have you learned along the way?
I think people should acquire a classical education in philosophy before working in technology. In Silicon Valley, there’s an assumption that technology is neutral, or that all progress is inherently good.
But that hasn’t been the case: technology affects human ends and their reachability. Technology contains political and moral dimensions that people who work in tech need to think more deeply about.