By Allan Maurer
ATLANTA—In 1981, Attorney John Yates visited his sister at the computer company she started in Silicon Valley. He realized “A revolution was underway,” he says.
Yates formed a goal he retains at law firm Morris, Manning, & Martin in Atlanta. “Our mission is to be the leading provider of value-added legal services to tech companies in the Southeast,” he says.
Yates is one of the persons most frequently nominated for our annual list of the 25 most influential people in the Southeast tech scene, and returns to the list this year, which will appear in TechJournal South’s November print edition. This is an excerpt from the TJS interview and profile of Yates that will appear more fully in that issue.
He grew up in Raleigh, NC when his family moved South in 1959. “We were the second family in North Hills,” he recalls. “In those days the area had two roads, Rowan and Catawba and both were dirt roads.”
Even before visiting his sister in Silicon Valley, Yates had become involved with computers. Yates took a computer class in high school and realized two things: “Computers were cool, and I wasn’t a very good programmer,” he says. “But a lot of people in that computer class really knew what they were doing.”
After studying public policy and history as an undergrad at Duke University in Durham, NC, he went to Duke’s law school and was graduated in 1981. Even then, he says, he noticed that the law school offered no courses on technology law or even intellectual property law.
He moved to Atlanta after law school, and initially thought he would move to DC, New York City, or Boston. Eventually, though, he concluded that Atlanta was the business hub of the Southeast and that it might be possible for it to slowly develop a robust technology sector.
Once he joined Morris, Manning, & Martin in 1987, he focused on the goal he had conceived earlier, of becoming a leading provider of legal and value-added services to technology driven or enabled companies. He’s been internationally recognized in the field for 27 years.
Morris, Manning & Martin, he notes, offer several unique approaches to the technology sector. Those “value-added” services, for instance, include comprehensive databases of key investors in regional technology companies, leaders in Southeast markets, top management executives, and customer prospects, all of which can be invaluable to both fledgling companies and more mature ones.
Helping a startup find investors or top management candidates and particularly, customers, “really benefits your clients in a significant way,” Yates says. “It’s different than giving them tickets to a sporting event when you provide value that helps their business grow.”
Following a “skunk works” idea session several years ago, the law firm also developed a project management method of delivering its services to entrepreneurial companies. “It plays to the kinds of issues and processes technology companies face or use day to day,” says Yates.
Yates says that while the economy is “crunching down, we’ve been here before in the technology space. Some markets, real estate, financials, haven’t been through a downturn in a while. But it’s fresh in our minds from 2001 and 2002.” And that, he adds, may be a significant advantage for the tech sector.
“Technology companies and investors learned a lot of lessons. We already see companies taking immediate action to preserve cash and rethink strategy in this new environment.”
Yates says there is an upside to this down economy, although perhaps not for everyone.
“Tech companies and VCs with cash will be able to consolidate other companies and probably come out of this with more dominant positions in the market.”
On the other hand, cash-starved firms will be looking to be acquired. “Valuations might not be as good as they would like, but we think it’s going to happen,” he says.
“I’ve been attending board meetings of our tech clients over the last couple of weeks, and it’s clear that people believe there will be consolidation, although there is a high degree of caution.”
For more on John Yates, including on why he is “bullish” about the Southeast tech scene, look for our November print edition.
On the Web: www.mmmlaw.com
Southeast Venture Conference, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA – Where Smart Money Meets Smart People.
www.seventure.org
© 2008, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.
