Welcoming Thyrza to Cloud Family — the multilingual talent from the Caribbean

She grew up on Curaçao — the small Caribbean island whose name most people associate with a brightly coloured liqueur. For Thyrza Kleine it is something far bigger: it is home. A home where four languages are everyday life, and where young people often look towards Europe for their future. At 18, Thyrza did what many from the island dream of: she moved to the Netherlands to study. That is where her curiosity about value, impact and meaningful numbers beyond conventional business thinking was awakened. We are now glad to welcome Thyrza to Cloud Family as Sales Manager for the Netherlands.

It was Fredrik from Hicareer who introduced Thyrza to Cloud Family — and once she met the team, everything he had said was confirmed. No games, no pretence. Just calm, open questions and room to be herself.

"I also liked that the company was born out of a real problem the founders ran into themselves during their time at Appland. It was not a theoretical idea — it was a practical solution that became a product. That gave the whole thing a credibility that only comes from experience."

A thesis that resurfaced, and reawakened her curiosity

In the Netherlands, Thyrza studied hotel management and worked in places where staying calm under pressure — with a smile — was part of the job. Her final thesis then became a deep dive into Social Return on Investment for a restaurant in Melbourne with a "pay as you feel" concept. Putting numbers on things that are not usually measured changed how she saw value.

About ten years later she stumbled across the thesis again by chance — and to her surprise it had been read widely and mentioned in a news article she had never even seen.

"It woke the same curiosity in me that I had forgotten about. I took a chance and got a job in climate tech, at CarbonCloud. That led to two years working with leaders in the food industry — from farmers to large retailers in Benelux and Spain — turning vague sustainability words into scientific numbers," she says.

It has never been about saying the right things, but about asking the right questions and being genuinely curious about the challenges.

"I am here to understand what it is like to be in our customers' shoes. To ask, to listen and to help tech professionals see what they did not know was possible," she says, and continues: "We help companies save 10–20% on AWS — without touching their infrastructure and with no lock-in at all. What makes us unique is that we can reallocate unused savings in real time."

She explains that she wants to make technical complexity human, simple and clear enough to understand.

"All it takes is a simple CSV download, a few seconds. No fixed costs, no gimmicks — just immediate results. I am here so that more companies find that out, starting with my fellow Dutch."

No bottlenecks, and a culture that pushes you to develop

Thyrza explains that the most inspiring thing about the culture at Cloud Family is iteration. Markus, Jonatan, Henrik and Daniel have built something unusual: a place where you test quickly, learn from it and adjust as you go.

"Ideas do not get stuck in endless bottlenecks — they move forward. We are not chasing perfection. We are building antifragility: resilience bounces back, but antifragility gets stronger under pressure. At Cloud Family you are expected to say what you think and help shape what comes next, even if you have only just started. And that makes it easy for me to show up as I am," she says.

In her third week she took on the challenge of signing up for a certification exam that AWS recommends six months of experience for. She threw herself headlong into the acronyms to try to understand the whole cloud ecosystem.

"I aimed high, and missed by about five to seven points. It was raining, and it also happened to be my birthday. So there I was, heading back to the office to share the news."

But what could have been a sad story turned into something else. Instead there was laughter and cake at the Cloud Family office.

"It gave me a sense of pride that I actually gave it a try. I went back to the whiteboard, iterated, and was reminded of something Markus said when we first met. He said: 'I want you to fail, and fail fast. Then we adjust and keep failing until we succeed.' That moment confirmed everything," she says.

Sales is full of rejection and missed shots. That is simply the nature of the game. Thyrza says the energy at Cloud Family means you do not have to wait until you feel ready. You can just go, without hesitating.

She explains that she sees Cloud Family becoming the quiet standard in future. The one you trust when it matters and when simplicity counts.

"We have had zero customer churn in 2.5 years — that says it all, and it makes it easy to spread the word. I am proud that they trust me to take what works in the Nordics and spread it globally," she says.

"Honestly — what I look forward to most is not having to think too far ahead. Right now I am just happy to be here. Sitting in my office in Brunnsparken in Gothenburg, looking out at the gulls, the trams, the boats and the people going past… and asking myself: how did I end up here, someone from a small island, with a surname that literally means 'small', getting to talk to tech experts all over the world?"

Besides talking about smart tech solutions, Thyrza loves cooking for people as much as she likes making them laugh (or, as she calls her favourite laugh, "slappe lach" — literally a "limp laugh").

Tennis is her favourite sport, and lakes still feel exotic to her. She loves digging through second-hand shops for hidden treasure, and has a weakness for rapping complicated lyrics.

"Kendrick's DNA and A Tribe Called Quest's Can I Kick It? are favourites. Karaoke is a deadly serious business. And yes, that is a hint to my new colleagues for the next after-work," Thyrza concludes.

We are very glad and full of anticipation to have Thyrza Kleine on the team, and we look forward to what she will contribute as Cloud Family develops.