Terminal Value

AI is changing FP&A from a tool-assisted workflow into something closer to an operating system for business planning.In this episode of Terminal Value, Nik Singh sits down with Austin Gardner-Smith, Founder & CEO of Drivepoint, to discuss why financial planning and forecasting are especially critical in consumer, retail, and CPG businesses.The conversation covers why forecasting can be “life or death” when inventory, cash flow, and margins are on the line; why vertical software may beat horizontal FP&A tools; how AI changes the value proposition of SaaS; and what happens to finance teams as software moves from organizing work to actually doing the work.Drivepoint is building agentic planning software for consumer and retail brands, helping teams connect data across Shopify, Amazon, retailers, ERP systems, inventory systems, and finance workflows.Chapters:00:00 — Why forecasting is life or death in retail and CPG00:50 — Welcome to Terminal Value01:00 — What Drivepoint is building01:20 — Why this is about more than FP&A software01:50 — What FP&A actually does inside the CFO office04:10 — The evolution of FP&A tools: Oracle, Anaplan, Adaptive, Workday, Pigment06:30 — What Drivepoint does differently07:50 — From financial models to proactive scenario planning09:50 — Why Drivepoint focuses on consumer and retail12:30 — Why inventory makes forecasting high stakes13:40 — How AI changes FP&A for business leaders15:40 — Trust, permissions, and governed access in AI finance tools16:30 — Why the UI layer is collapsing17:20 — Why data quality matters more in AI-native software19:30 — How software pricing may change in an AI world22:30 — Will Anthropic or OpenAI build this?25:10 — How AI changes finance team org design27:10 — Where Drivepoint goes next28:40 — Nik’s closing thoughts: context, vertical AI, and where software value accruesTopics covered:FP&A softwareVertical AIAgentic planningRetail and CPG forecastingInventory planningStrategic financeOffice of the CFOSaaS pricing modelsAI and finance jobsData quality and context layersDrivepointSubscribe to Terminal Value for deep dives on where value accrues across AI, software, and markets.#investing #retailtech #venturecapital

AI-native software is changing the economics of SaaS.For years, cloud cost management was mostly about visibility: dashboards, budgets, showback, chargeback, and rate optimization. But as AI usage, token costs, observability bills, and cloud consumption become material parts of software gross margin, the problem is moving closer to the code itself.In this episode of Terminal Value, I sit down with Mike Weider, Founder & CEO of Frugal, to discuss the shift from traditional FinOps to Application Cost Engineering.We cover why legacy cloud cost tools mostly helped companies measure spend, how Frugal maps cloud and AI costs back to the code driving them, why AI-native companies face a more urgent gross margin problem, and why cost optimization may become part of the developer workflow.Chapters:00:00 Cold open: AI’s gross margin problem00:25 Welcome to Terminal Value01:20 Why cloud cost management matters more because of AI01:50 Interview begins02:00 The first wave of cloud cost management04:20 Showback, chargeback, and the finance/engineering tension06:35 What Frugal is building07:00 Why cloud cost optimization is too reactive today09:35 Moving cost visibility into the developer workflow10:00 Mapping cloud, AI, and observability costs back to code12:10 How FinOps and engineering work together14:45 Building trust in cost-to-code automation17:45 Why Frugal uses a forward-deployed engineer model20:00 Why AI still needs the right context21:45 Frugal’s ICP and where customers get the most value23:25 Why AI-native companies have a gross margin problem24:35 Frontier models, cheaper models, and evals28:00 Pricing AI-native software31:20 How AI changes engineering teams32:35 Engineers as conductors of AI agents35:20 Where Frugal sits in the software stack37:20 Why FinOps dashboards still matter39:00 Competition from FinOps, observability, and coding agents41:05 The future of cost-aware code43:00 Key takeaways from the conversationTerminal Value explores where value accrues across markets, software, AI, and infrastructure through deep dives with founders, operators, and investors.Subscribe for more conversations on the businesses and markets shaping the next wave of enterprise software.#AI #Software #FinOps #CloudComputing #SaaS #EnterpriseSoftware #GrossMargins #TerminalValue