Two partners. Both operators.
No analysts, no layers. The people you meet in the first conversation are the people who run the diligence, sign the deal and do the work after it.
- Based in
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Leads at Mandu
- Growth, sales and deal origination
- Languages
- English and French, fluent. Spanish, Finnish and Korean, intermediate.
- linkedin.com/in/timgrassin
Tim Grassin
Three companies founded and sold, on two continents.
Tim started in finance in Montréal, then built two companies in Toronto: Stinson Design, a presentation design agency, and Candy Banners, a digital ad production studio. Both were acquired.
In 2018 he moved to Southeast Asia and co-founded TendoPay, a Philippine fintech serving employees through their employers. As Chief Commercial Officer he ran growth to more than 200 employer partners and $5M in annual recurring revenue before Tonik, the parent of Tonik Digital Bank, acquired the business.
Since then he has been a venture partner at Iterative and a mentor at 500 Startups. He hosts Next Big Wave, a podcast for founders in Southeast Asia, and organises the Bangkok Startup Association. Today he is co-founder and CEO of Kubegrade and runs Wangift in Bangkok. He has lived and worked in France, Canada, the Philippines and Thailand.
Speaker at Startup Grind Bangkok (2024) and the Founder Institute (2025).
- Based in
- San Francisco Bay Area, United States
- Leads at Mandu
- Technology, automation and operations
- Works in
- AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform
- linkedin.com/in/calebfornari
- Writing
- calebfornari.com
Caleb Fornari
Two decades making companies run faster and break less.
Caleb built some of the original AWS tooling for Netflix and was a contributor to Terraform, the infrastructure-as-code tool used across the industry. He then founded StartOps Group, a San Francisco DevOps firm, and led it as CTO for ten years.
Through StartOps he designed and implemented infrastructure automation for small and mid-sized companies across AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. Along the way he has talked with thousands of engineers and executives in hundreds of companies about why operational change stalls and how to get it moving again.
He writes, speaks and teaches on DevOps, and has been a guest and panelist on the Adventures in DevOps podcast. In 2024 he co-founded Kubegrade with Tim, where he leads engineering on AI agents for Kubernetes operations. He remains a board member and advisor at StartOps Group.
One rebuilds how it sells. One rebuilds how it runs.
Already a team
Tim and Caleb have been co-founders since 2024, building Kubegrade together as CEO and CTO.
Bangkok and San Francisco
One partner on the ground in Southeast Asia, close to owners and operations. One in the United States.
Partner-led, every deal
Sourcing, diligence, the operating plan and the work after the close all sit with the same two people.