Sharpen
Robyn Hussa, Tim Farrell
Robyn Hussa, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharpen has been working for nearly two decades building collaborative relationships between state agencies, educational systems, public health and researchers across the U.S to increase connectedness and primary prevention in mental health for communities.
Tim Farrell, Co-founder and COO, is an award winning New York City news producer, specializing in multimedia content creation and documentary filmmaking, with an emphasis on journalistic-style stories of hope healing.
Robyn and Tim met as award-winning artists in NYC almost 30 years ago and have directed over 3000 films, live events and educational programs. Their passion for content creation and mental health gave birth to the Sharpen platform, sharpenminds.com
Background
Robyn and Tim have used a couple of accounting and finance solutions for their start-up but have always struggled seeing and understanding the numbers. They did not feel that the numbers and reports really represented the true performance of the business.
We must admit the Streaming business model is a bit more complex. The accounting should be adapted to reflect the real performance of the business. Sharpen’s founders had questions about how to account for the content created. The content had been expensed previously but they felt like the margins were fluctuating too much and they were not wrong.
The Result
Having us on their team, Robyn and Tim were able to see the big picture, zoom out and work on what’s important to move the needle in the business. They focused on financing, growing the team and growth strategies.
In addition, the founders spent less energy and time organizing and putting together the numbers. They understood their financial reports and prepared outstanding investor reports on a Quarterly basis. Their conversations with investors and the team were smoother and clearly supported the Sharpen vision.
Now that a good foundation in place, we can move forward to more fun things like strategizing the next moves with strategic projections.
Who we are
01 Our team studied the streaming platforms accounting treatment and made a professional judgment for the Sharpen content accounting.
We changed the accounting method for content creation to reflect a linear recognition of the expense in the P&L. We treated the content as an asset to reflect it on the Balance Sheet and amortized it throughout its useful life.
02 We also reviewed the Sharpen revenue streams and re-strategized the chart of accounts to reflect them appropriately as well as the costs associated with them. This allowed us to show the right margins each month.
03 The Cypher team also proceeded to cleaning old balances that were carried forward on the Balance Sheet and were not longer relevant. We hate to see inaccurate beginning balances!!!!!
04 No need to mention the new financial tech stack – tech processes are life!!!
