LiveOne CFO Misses His Bonus Target, Company Responds By Hiring A More Expensive CFO Who Technically Doesn’t Work There
LiveOne’s outgoing CFO, Ryan Carhart, was paid a $200,000 salary with a target bonus of $70,000.
His actual bonus: $0.
That isn’t missing the target. That’s firing the arrow backward, hitting the snack machine, and submitting the security footage as your annual performance review.
Ryan then left for another job—but not before LiveOne accelerated 5,000 LiveOne shares and 10,200 PodcastOne shares for helping with the transition.
So apparently he didn’t perform well enough to earn a bonus, but did perform well enough to receive thousands of shares for showing the next bozo where the “Final_FINAL_10K_v7_USE_THIS_ONE.xlsx” file was hidden.
To replace him, LiveOne hired Craig Christensen for $6,250 per week.
That’s approximately $325,000 per year—a 62.5% increase over Ryan’s base salary—to perform the same job while legally being classified as a man who does not work there.
Craig is LiveOne’s Interim CFO, Interim Treasurer, Interim Secretary, and Principal Accounting Officer. He holds enough executive titles to fill an entire LinkedIn page, but his contract insists he is merely an independent consultant.
He’s essentially Schrödinger’s CFO:
- An executive when the SEC calls.
- A contractor when the benefits department calls.
- A shareholder if the paperwork gets filed.
- Missing presumed dead if somebody asks about profitability.
Craig can receive 15,000 LiveOne shares—not for increasing revenue, generating cash, reducing debt, or raising the stock price.
He gets them for filing the 10-K and 10-Q.
LiveOne has turned submitting legally required financial statements into a Chuck E. Cheese prize counter.
“Congratulations, Craig! You uploaded two PDFs. Here are 15,000 tickets. Unfortunately, the plastic spider ring now costs 40,000.”
The entire arrangement is basically Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) applied to corporate finance.
LiveOne now has Full Self-Accounting (Supervised):
The company pays $27,000 per month, the software remains in beta, and the audit committee must keep its hands on the wheel while the dashboard flashes:
TAKE OVER IMMEDIATELY — GOING-CONCERN FOOTNOTE AHEAD.
After approximately 90 days, LiveOne and Craig will hold “good-faith discussions” about making him the permanent CFO.
That’s the same timeline Tesla uses:
Full autonomy—and apparently a full-time CFO—will be available later this year, pending regulatory approval, favorable weather, and the continued existence of the company.
This is vintage LiveOne financial engineering:
Ryan made $200,000 but earned no bonus.
Craig makes $325,000 but isn’t an employee.
Craig receives stock for filing reports about why the company keeps issuing stock.
And shareholders get the privilege of watching two finance bozos exchange the calculator while management calls it “enhanced operational flexibility.”
LiveOne didn’t hire a new CFO.
It subscribed to CFO-as-a-Service, selected the most expensive monthly plan, and forgot to uncheck the box marked “automatic dilution.”