The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is not formally a government agency. As such, they don’t have to adhere to government pay schedules. This means that board members are paid more that $500,000 per year. Not a bad job if you can get it.
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SEC takes criticism for shell company filings
Imagine a public company, registered with the SEC, that has no revenues and limited assets (if any). That’s a fair description of your typical public shell company. According to a WSJ article, the SEC is getting heat for allowing these types of companies become registered in the first place but insists that it has “limited powers when it comes to blocking an initial public offering of stock—no matter how flimsy a company may look on paper.”
In a statement, the SEC said it has begun asking new shell companies how they plan to meet federal requirements for preparing audited financial statements. The agency said it also is looking more closely at the role of outside auditors at such companies.
Supreme Court says PCAOB is Valid
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board which was established with the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. However, the court was concerned with the tenure of the board members and in a 5-to-4 split decision, it gave the Securities and Exchanged Commission the authority to fire any of the PCAOB board members without cause. Before the ruling, the SEC could only fire a board member when there was good cause.
For Everyone
As I mentioned in an earlier post, iPad removes the barrier between the user and the computer. There’s no need to learn about saving documents, file structure, or folders (yet). Need more proof?
From TUAW, a story about a 99 year old women who buys her first computer, iPad, and is able to read and write again. She suffers from glaucoma which makes reading difficult.
The future of computing is changing.
Pages for iPad, Simple for Kids
A couple years ago I bought a OLPC for my daughter who was four years old at the time. Recently she has shown interest in learning to type. I pulled out the OLPC and started up the word processor. She would practice typing but never saved any of her work. One day she asked how she could save her typing. I showed her (after figuring it out for myself first).
With my recent purchase of iPad and Apple’s wireless Bluetooth keyboard, my daughter has been practicing her typing on the iPad using Pages. She asked, “will it save my typing?”
“Yes, it’ll save it. You don’t have to do anything,” I said.
Think about that. Here’s a list of things that she and I didn’t have to do:
- I didn’t have to show her how to save a document.
- She didn’t have to worry about losing work.
- She didn’t think of a name for her document (Pages automatically assigned one)
- She didn’t have to understand file/folder structure and decide where to save the document.
All she has to do is to exit out of the Pages app when she is done. Pages is definitely kid-friendly. As adults we don’t have to worry about this because we never lose work because we forget to save and we never forget where we save a file.
Run Your Business Like You Mean It
This evening I attended an AccessEN event. Kristen Manger, CEO of Webvisible was the guest speaker. Her presentation was about how her company survived 2009, one of the most difficult year for many companies. Not only did her company survive, but it met its operational goals and raised $20 million from venture capitalists in the last quarter of 2009.
During her presentation, she said one thing that really stuck out: even though Webvisible is a privately-held company, she and her team run it like its a publicly-traded company. Not only does the company have their financial statements audited annually by Ernst & Young (Kirsten, if you want more value for your money, call me — who the hell are Ernest & Young anyways? Never heard of them), but they have their financial statements reviewed quarterly.
Kirsten is running her business like she means it. She is putting the right infrastructure and talent in place. There’s no mom and pop mentality.
Many business owners ignore the realities of their business. They spend more time being the technician in their business rather than the CEO — the person with the vision for the company and the person who puts all the pieces together. As Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth, says, business owners spend too much time working in their business instead of on their business.
Business owners are so concerned with product development and sales that they do not pay attention to the infrastructure: accounting, human resources, technology, and building key management.
A business owner that is not intimate with the numbers and whether those numbers are accurate are going to have a tough time attracting investors or convincing a bank to extend it a line of credit or loan.
Business owners who don’t know the difference between EBITDA and net income are in trouble. Those who don’t understand the interplay between the balance sheet, profit and loss statement and the statement of cash flows are in trouble. These business owners simply don’t know their business.
The same goes for human resource issues. Many business fail at correctly classifying their employees between exempt and non-exempt or know the criteria that separates an employee from an independent contractor.
Does this all sound overwhelming? It does because it is. A business owner needs to understand these things, but they don’t have to be an expert in them. Outsource the talent that you don’t have but just understand how it all fits back into your company.
As with all new businesses, money is tight but that doesn’t mean that you can’t buy a little help here and there when you get a chance; buy a little advice at a time just to make sure that you’re on the right track.
Chrysanthemum
I went into a Chinese herbal medicine store this weekend to buy a big block of Chrysanthemum ($8).The packaging makes me think that I am purchasing some illicit. There’s a holographic sticker on the package which seems strange.
I used an old French Press to brew my tea. Not the best but it works.
Childhood Wisdom
My 4 year old son, Christopher, proclaimed his “love” for his classmate Madison during dinner tonight. My wife asked Christopher why he loves Madison.
“She respects me,” said Christopher.
“How does she respect you Christopher?”
“She listens to me.”
In the business world we often hear about communication but all too often we forget that listening is part of communication. How many times have we been interpreted by a coworker as we are trying to share our ideas? Worst yet, how often have we interrupted our customers as they talked?
Listening equals respect. This is childhood wisdom that adults should remember and practice.