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Amsterdam, Netherlands

Raza Padhani

Founder of Golden Canal B.V.

Engineering leader

I build and back software companies from Amsterdam. Before founding Golden Canal I led engineering teams at Wolt and DoorDash. These days I split my time between my own products, angel investing, and offering leadership at a startup.

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Portrait of Raza Padhani

About

On entrepreneurship

I am passionate about building things that solve real problems — whether that is a product I ship myself, a small company I acquire and improve, or a team I help move faster. That curiosity has taken me from iOS engineering to logistics platforms, from startups in San Francisco to Amsterdam, and from operator to founder and investor.

Experience

Where I've worked

  1. Jan 2025 — Present

    Amsterdam

    Golden Canal B.V.

    Founder & Engineer

    My own venture, building and acquiring software products with AI-transformation tooling at the core. I ship the products myself: two iOS apps built from scratch, plus acquisitions including an AI document-chat app and Zeevonk Melding, a Dutch bioluminescence reporting service.

    • Product
    • iOS
    • AI tooling
    • Acquisitions

  2. Apr 2026 — Present

    The Hague

    Go Potty | De Pot Op

    Chief Technology Officer

    Leading technology and engineering as CTO, setting the technical direction alongside the founding team.

    • CTO
    • Strategy
    • Team building

  3. Nov 2022 — Oct 2024

    Amsterdam

    Wolt

    Software Engineering Manager

    Led a team of five through the migration of the Merchant iPad app from native Swift to cross-platform Flutter on a Kotlin backend. Drove a phased rollout across 25+ countries with quality gates, instrumentation, and staged releases, aligning Product, Design, and Operations on timelines, risks, and success metrics.

    • Engineering management
    • Flutter
    • Kotlin
    • 25+ markets

  4. Jul 2018 — Oct 2022

    San Francisco Bay Area

    DoorDash

    Technical Lead, Staff Engineer

    Joined at a $1.4B valuation and stayed through the $71B IPO. In the Logistics org I led up to five engineers end to end across web, backend, iOS, and Android, owning core parts of the Dasher app and fulfillment flows. Delivered multi-dropoff, handoff, and proof-of-delivery building blocks for non-restaurant logistics, supported the Australia launch on the ground, and ran company-wide hackathons.

    • Staff engineer
    • Logistics
    • iOS
    • IPO

Education

How I learned it

  1. Executive MBA

    Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

    Business Administration and Management

  2. Summer Institute for General Management

    Stanford Graduate School of Business

    Four-week on-campus general management programme

  3. B.S. Mechanical Engineering

    University of Florida

    Bachelor of Science

  4. Associate of Arts

    Seminole State College of Florida

    A.A.

Giving back

The Raza & Falon Padhani Endowed Scholarship

My own path started at Seminole State College of Florida, so my wife and I endowed a scholarship there. It supports students taking the same first step we did — the one that is hardest to fund and easiest to overlook. Contributions go directly to students through the college.

Donate to the scholarship

Honors & certifications

  • Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar
  • Distinguished Expat in Business
  • Google Analytics Individual Qualification

Writing

Blog & articles

Developing a Perspective on AI: 2025

Over the past few months, I've tried various AI tools primarily in the website and code generation space, observed pre-seed funding trends, and absorbed leading viewpoints during my daily gym routine—all aimed at crafting a clear perspective on how AI will shape both our daily lives and businesses.

Read the article →
Cover of Better Than BookSmart, Undergraduate Edition

Book · 2014

Better Than BookSmart

Undergraduate Edition

Interviews with students and recent graduates within five years of finishing college, collecting the personal experiences and practical context that help you make the most of school and the years right after it.

AmazonApple Books

Published elsewhere

Interviews

Angel investing

What I back

I write early cheques into friends and family rounds into companies where I can be more than money — usually because I have shipped something adjacent myself. If you are raising and think that applies, the fastest route is to book a slot and walk me through it.

  1. 01

    Founder-led software

    Pre-seed and seed teams with strong founders shipping their own product and a clear point of view on who it is for.

  2. 02

    AI in the workflow

    Tools that fold AI into an existing job to be done rather than selling the model itself — code, content, and operations workflows I have run myself.

  3. 03

    Good and interesting stuff

    Any type of good and interesting company — not necessarily mobile or consumer. If the problem is real and the team is sharp, I want to hear about it.

Also happy to talk about

  • Breaking into tech
  • Product and AI
  • Software development and mobile applications
  • Engineering management

Startup idea, advice, or a raise?

Mentorship on school and career moves, feedback on what you are building, or a speaking slot — same calendar either way.

Book a chat