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Profit First: Reverse Engineer Your Way To Financial Success

Terry Starbucker

What’s wrong with the traditional “GAAP” accounting formula. The money management genius of your grandmother. Confident that he had the formula to success, he became an angel investor… and proceeded to lose his entire fortune. Then he started all over again, with a new “Profit first” formula.

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A Blueprint for Digital Companies’ Financial Reporting

Harvard Business Review

Investors, therefore, look not just for reported revenues but for drivers behind the revenues, especially because digital companies’ operating activities often differ from their revenue-generating activities. The first category should describe the amount spent on supporting current operations.

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Why We Need to Update Financial Reporting for the Digital Era

Harvard Business Review

However, many investors seem to have concluded that the most successful companies with tens of billions of dollars of valuation today could never have justified their valuation at the start of their operation based on discounted cash flow. So, investors, and therefore managers, might be adjusting their approach to risk accordingly.

Report 8
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Reclaiming the Idea of Shareholder Value

Harvard Business Review

Activist investors challenge management strategies. Countries that operate under common law, including the United States and the United Kingdom, lean in this direction. Countries that operate under civil law, including France, Germany, and Japan, tend to be in this camp.

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Keep Your Sarbanes-Oxley Off My CFO

Harvard Business Review

If a CFO is operating outside the bounds of policy or law or GAAP and is willing to lie to the board about it, I doubt that he or she would be overly concerned about whether the line being crossed is dotted or solid. Even if the problem did exist, this proposal wouldn't fix it. Third (and most important): It will do great harm.

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You Can't Impress Stock Analysts.and Shouldn't Try

Harvard Business Review

It's a strategic and operational straight-jacket. In essence, they'll report their results to GAAP standards and as the SEC, FASB, and other quasi-regulatory bodies require.but they won't answer to analysts. I have a sneaking suspicion that most CEOs and CFOs would enjoy this kind of freedom from analyst conversations.

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Midsized Firms Can Survive a Cash Crisis

Harvard Business Review

Operational meltdowns can devour a midsized company’s cash. Cash revenues were indeed $200 million for the year, but the correct GAAP net revenues were only $30 million and profit was $2 million. Top management must be very careful about how they downsize the organization. Crisis management Cutting costs Small/medium business'

Crisis 8