How to Make Usage Optimization a Boardroom Topic

PointFive Co-CEO Alon Arvatz and Nubank's Thomas Hammer (Product Operations lead for FinOps) tackle an overlooked challenge: it's not enough to do usage optimization, you have to make executives and the board care about it. Thomas explains how Nubank, Latin America's largest retail bank with ~131 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, thinks about the cloud bill in three layers (price, business-driven usage, and efficiency-driven usage) and why the biggest opportunities now live in the deeper layers of waste: configuration drift, application patterns, and architectural inefficiencies. He shares real results from tackling thousands of individually tiny opportunities in aggregate (DynamoDB storage-class and lifecycle automation, EBS cleanup) for roughly 1.3% of total cloud spend saved, plus a metric his CTO tracks closely: reduction in time to resolution (an unattached EBS volume's average life dropped from 210 days to two weeks). Verified savings over estimates are what turn FinOps into a boardroom conversation, because leadership discounts anything that sounds like "more or less." 00:00 Intro: Why Usage Optimization Needs Boardroom Attention 04:58 The Three Levels of Cloud Cost: Price, Business Usage, Efficiency 10:12 The Layers of Waste and Why the Deep Ones Matter Most 13:01 Nubank Case Studies: Automating Thousands of Small Opportunities 20:09 Credibility, Verified Savings, and Metrics That Resonate 25:29 Tooling Requirements, Takeaways, and Q&A Watch the Day 1 Keynote and Tokenomics Foundation announcement: https://www.youtube.com/live/W4g8xvduIbs Watch the Day 2 Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/live/vyQTW0PLw7A Learn more about Token Economics: https://tokeneconomics.com https://x.finops.org https://join.finops.org #FinOps #FinOpsX #UsageOptimization #CloudWaste #Nubank