How to Build an Annual Plan That Actually Works in the AI Era | M.G. Thibaut

Every annual plan will be wrong. What matters is whether it still helps you decide when reality diverges from your assumptions. In this Scale Finance Council session, M.G. Thibaut, CFO Executive in Residence at Scale Venture Partners and former CFO of DroneDeploy, shows how to challenge your 2027 assumptions, plan for capacity instead of just headcount, measure the return on AI spend, and run a plan that guides decisions all year. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN • The planning fundamentals that haven't changed, and why a plan is a decision tool, not a forecast • How to start with strategy: bets, financial guardrails, and explicit trade-offs • Four shifts changing your 2027 assumptions: headcount and productivity, AI costs, revenue, and gross margin • How to budget AI spend by use case and turn saved time into real economic value • The questions to ask before opening a new headcount rec • How to pick the 3 to 5 assumptions that could break your plan, and decide in advance how you'll respond • How to take your plan to the board, and the monthly and quarterly cadence that keeps it alive • Five questions to ask before you sign off on the plan CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro: moving from modeling to better assumptions 0:57 Today's agenda 1:31 Which planning assumptions no longer hold? 2:19 Fundamentals that haven't changed 2:45 A plan is a decision tool, not a forecast 3:18 Why plans built in isolation lack credibility 3:53 What a good plan does: five things 5:14 Start with strategy, not a model 5:44 Strategic bets, financial guardrails, and trade-offs 7:12 What's changing for 2027 planning 7:56 Four shifts: headcount, AI costs, revenue, margins 9:40 Data points from Gartner and Figma 10:26 Q&A: AI as labor budget and how it hits the financials 12:03 Four ways to think about AI spend 13:49 Guardrails for usage-based costs 14:14 Pricing strategy and customer value maps 16:39 Measuring the ROI on AI spend 17:18 Turning saved time into economic value 18:57 Questions to ask about every AI investment 19:54 Does AI deserve a different ROI standard than T&E? 20:52 Discussion: back-office efficiency vs. engineering costs 23:55 Planning for capacity, not just headcount 26:24 AI's impact on revenue and cost to deliver 28:08 Q&A: customer-level cost data 30:10 Tools for tracking AI spend 34:00 Capital allocation: three buckets 35:08 Building a plan that survives reality 35:44 Scenario planning that changes decisions 37:41 The planning timeline 38:13 The challenge phase: finance's new role 39:34 Aligning the team and running an eight-week sprint 40:43 Bringing the plan to your board 43:10 From annual plan to monthly and quarterly cadence 44:32 Finance still owns the judgment 45:47 Five questions to ask before signing off on the plan 47:09 Coterie CFO and next steps 48:07 Q&A and comments from the group 50:43 Audience idea: finance and go-to-market together 51:48 Closing takeaways ABOUT SCALE VENTURE PARTNERS Scale Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm. The Go-to-Market Advisory Group hosts 40+ events a year and advises portfolio companies one-to-one. Subscribe to our Substack: https://www.howwescaledthis.com/ Connect with M.G. Thibaut:   / mgthibaut   #AnnualPlanning #CFO #AIinFinance #FinancialPlanning #SaaSFinance #FPA