Kiril Karov is the founder of Softerflow – the pan-European designer exchange that was piloted in The Hague before launching in Sofia in March 2026 and traveling on to Rotterdam, Berlin, and Warsaw. He runs the logistics end-to-end and curates an exceptional team of senior Review Leads who mentor emerging talent at every stop.
Softerflow’s DNA traces back to formative experiences: debating internationally for Bulgaria as a teenager, Erasmus exchanges as a student, and volunteering at The Next Web’s Amsterdam conferences, where he was later selected for TNW’s T500 – the Netherlands’ top 500 digital creatives. Watching that conference grow a community around it shaped Softerflow’s core: a community first, scaling across Europe through exchange.
Today, he is a Product Designer at Amdaris (an Insight, Fortune 500 company), alongside a supportive team that gives every member the stage.
At UX Sofia, Kiril argues that AI can produce the design work – but defending the thinking behind it is a uniquely human skill, built only through practice with other humans. He shares how Softerflow’s live reviews grow that muscle, and what he has learned scaling a pan-European community out of Bulgaria – with AI agents as constant thinking partners.
Six years across the Netherlands, the UK, and Bulgaria have left him with one conviction: the best design talent in Europe isn’t always visible – it just needs the right room.