It looks like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) will affect not only the large and public corporations, but also the small, private firms, especially those with VC investments.

The FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) has recently mandated that public AND private companies start deducting the value of employee stock options from their profits. Compliance for the private firms is to begin on December 15, six months after the public firms. According to the National Venture Capital Association, calculating the value of options will be so costly and time-consuming that many private firms will forgo them to their detriment. This would be unfortunate, since for many startups, “stock options help motivate founders and managers as they try to build new businesses,” says Jim Breyer, former chairman of the NVCA (March 2005) and a managing partner with Accel Partners, a leading VC firm. The NVCA has turned to the U.S. Congress to step in and alter the FASB rule before it takes effect later this year.

If you don’t have time to read the whole Sarbanes-Oxley Act, this S-O summary covers many of the significant issues. For those seeking VC funding, make sure to also check out the “Venture Capital’s Comeback” article, recently published in the HBS Alumni Bulletin.

As an entrepreneur, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Anything that saves time and frustration helps. So here are several productivity tools that I’ve been very happy with recently:

1. OnlyMyEmail (http://www.onlymyemail.com) – Spam filter. This service costs $3 per month. Basically, it retrieves e-mail from up to three different servers (your ISP and some free accounts like yahoo), and removes the spam, viruses, etc. You then configure your Outlook (or whatever e-mail client you’re using) to retrieve your e-mail from the onlymyemail.com server. They send you a daily report of all of the junk they’ve filtered out. If they deleted an e-mail that should not have been deleted, you can change a setting. So far, this is only happening for some opt-in newsletters.
2. YouSendIt (http://www.yousendit.com) – Solution for transferring large files. E-mail was designed to send small text messages; that’s why large attachments sometimes fail (or take forever to send). This free web-based service allows you to send files of up to 1 GB in size. You simply upload the file to their server, and they send an e-mail notification to the recipient. The recipient clicks on the link, and the file downloads. Easy.
3. Vice Versa (http://www.tgrmn.com) – Synchronizes folders among two or more computers. Changes to files, new files, deleted files, renamed files, files moved to another folder – whatever you do gets replicated on the other computer. It’s not perfect (I’ve had to manually run the re-synchronization a few times), but it’s a massive timesaver if you have a laptop and a desktop. Now I can sit down at either machine without worrying about which one has the latest version of my documents.
4. OsaSync (http://www.vaita.com) – Synchronizes Outlook among two or more computers. Changes to contacts, notes, tasks, and e-mails (new mail, deleted mail, mail moved to another folder, etc.) gets replicated on the other computer. Also not perfect. For example, if you read a message on one machine, it will continue to show up as unread on the other computer. Also, if you delete an attachment from a message on one machine, the action is not replicated on the other computer. Still, it’s great to have access to everything I need on both machines.
5. Yahoo Desktop Search (http://desktop.yahoo.com) – Find anything quickly. Searches through documents (spreadsheets, Word docs, PDFs, PowerPoints, text files, etc.), e-mails, instant messenger archives, and virtually everything else on your computer. I personally find the interface to be more powerful, flexible, and useful than Google’s Desktop Search. For example, if I search on a person’s name, a “preview pane” shows me the contents of every file the person’s name appears in. Refine your search by directory/folder, file type, date modified, and more.
6. Treo 650 (http://web.palmone.com/) – It’s a phone. It’s an e-mail client and web browser. It’s a PDA. It’s a camcorder (although not a very good one). Basically, this little baby does it all, with the glaring exception of voice dialing. Great battery life. I love this thing. Be sure to buy the anti-stupid insurance to protect against accidental damage, since this thing is fragile and it isn’t cheap.

Know of a great productivity tool? Let us know!

You can always submit resources to our website; just find the appropriate page in the Resources section and click on the “Suggest a Resource” link. Some sections of interest:

- Reference & Research: http://www.caycon.com/resources.php?s=41
- Services & Utilities: http://www.caycon.com/resources.php?s=42
- Writing: http://www.caycon.com/resources.php?s=43
- Market Research Tools: http://www.caycon.com/resources.php?s=6
- General Research: http://www.caycon.com/resources.php?s=8