Quoted in the Portland Business Journal

I’m not sure that having me as an investor is going to do anything for GreenPrint, but at the very least, I give good copy. See the recent article from the Portland Business Journal.

Hayden Hamilton could raise far more than the $525,000 that investors have just committed to his two-year-old software company.

But the 30-year-old founder and CEO of GreenPrint Technologies LLC doesn’t want to dilute his investors’ stake — nor his own — any more than necessary.

“It’s a safety net” that will give him the ability to hire a few key people and reach profitability. Hamilton thinks that could be a year from now.

GreenPrint’s software, which allows a person to print from Web pages, Adobe files, e-mails and other sources while eliminating unnecessary pages, has been picked up for distribution by Xerox Corp.

Tri Synergy Inc., a Sharon, Mass.-based software publisher, also plans to launch the product in office supply stores such as Office Depot, Office Max and Staples starting in January. The largest distributor of hardware and software in Japan, Daiwabo, has also agreed to distribute GreenPrint to corporate customers.

“Many companies are focused on being environmentally friendly now,” said Tamra Nestler, co-founder and CEO of Tri Synergy. “We think it’s time for retail to embrace this.”

Besides office supply stores, Nestler plans to sell GreenPrint through electronics retailers such as Best Buy, Computer City and Fry’s Electronics. The software will be priced around $29.95.

Hamilton thinks Tri Synergy can sell 80,000 copies over the next year or so.

GreenPrint is in the right place at the right time, said investor Matt Humbaugh, an equity analyst with New York hedge fund Emerging Sovereign Group LLC.

Humbaugh, who met Hamilton when they were both students at Oxford University, put $10,000 of his own money into GreenPrint.

He says the fact that GreenPrint saves paper, and so can be seen as a tool for making office work more environmentally responsible, “opens a lot of doors that typically a startup software company couldn’t open.”

Step 1: Learn to Write, Step 2: Learn to Invest

Greg Mankiw has an interesting observation (via a hedge fund manager) on the correlation between writing well and investing well.

Write Well, Get Rich

Hedge fund manager Mark Sellers tells Harvard business students the secrets to success as an investor. An excerpt:

As an investor, you need to perform calculations and have a logical investment thesis. This is your left brain working. But you also need to be able to do things such as judging a management team from subtle cues they give off. You need to be able to step back and take a big picture view of certain situations rather than analyzing them to death. You need to have a sense of humor and humility and common sense. And most important, I believe you need to be a good writer. Look at Buffett; he’s one of the best writers ever in the business world. It’s not a coincidence that he’s also one of the best investors of all time. If you can’t write clearly, it is my opinion that you don’t think very clearly.

I hope this is true — it means the practice I’m getting writing this blog may some day be of value to someone other than my parents. Thanks, Dad.

Krugman on Giuliani

Krugman argues in today’s New York Times that Rudy Giuiliani is a liar, and a repeated one at that. He cites one incident (and I can think of several others) where Giuliani has boldly stated “facts” that are clearly not so, in this case, the prostate cancer survival rate in the U.S. versus Britain. The claim goes as follows:

“My chance of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States? Eighty-two percent,” says Rudy Giuliani in a new radio ad attacking Democratic plans for universal health care. “My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44 percent, under socialized medicine.”

Krugman points out, rightly, that the 44 percent number is biased and, in fact, wrong. I agree entirely with his observation,, especially after Googling the UK’s prostate cancer survival statistics. The five-year survival rate is actually closer to 74%, the number that Krugman cites.

I also agree that Giulian has a habit of mis-using facts, or simply, lying. This was struck home to me after seeing Giuliani and Romney fight over what Romney’s tax record actually was when he was governor of Massachusetts. No doubt in my mind that Giuliani was misquoting facts there, too.  I appreciate Romney’s response. To watch the video, see below

But back to Krugman. Here’s what Krugman actually says about Giuliani’s facts.

You see, the actual survival rate in Britain is 74.4 percent. That still looks a bit lower than the U.S. rate, but the difference turns out to be mainly a statistical illusion. The details are technical, but the bottom line is that a man’s chance of dying from prostate cancer is about the same in Britain as it is in America.

“The details are technical”? Listen, Professor Krugman, I am reading the New York Times, in fact, I’m reading the Op-Ed section, so don’t treat me like President Bush’s Child Left Behind. Your job, as a professor and as a columnist, is to explain complicated economic concepts (and possibly statistical ones) in language that I can understand. When you do that, you end up saying, “Trust me,” which to me, sounds a lot like what Giuliani is saying.

I agree with Krugman — Giuliani, despite some commendable leadership qualities, does not have the character to be our next President. I just disagree with his method of communicating this message.