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About Yokum


wsgrwebpic.jpg Yoichiro (”Yokum”) Taku is a corporate and securities partner in the Palo Alto, California office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. My WSGR web bio is here.

WSGR represents:
• more than 20% of the companies receiving venture financing each year;
• more U.S. companies in their initial public offerings than any other law firm worldwide; and
• more technology companies in mergers and acquisitions than any other U.S. law firm.

I represent technology and growth companies at all stages of development, through private financings, strategic transactions, public offerings, and mergers and acquisitions. I also represent investors in venture capital financings. I also advise numerous entrepreneurs from initial company formation to liquidity event. At any time, I typically represent several startup companies seeking venture financing, private companies that have received financing, and publicly traded companies.

I was born in Osaka, Japan in 1968. I moved to Toronto, Canada when I was under a year old because my father was completing a Ph.D at the University of Toronto. I later moved to St. Paul, Minnesota when I was in kindergarten because my father ended up at the University of Minnesota. I learned how to program in BASIC on a mainframe computer in fifth grade and received an Apple II+ computer when I was in sixth grade (sometime in 1979). In college, I was a policy debater and also coached high school debate, which resulted in a habit of numbering my answers to questions and speaking extremely quickly under pressure. I graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1990 and the University of Chicago Law School in 1993. After 20+ years of living in really cold places, I joined WSGR as a summer associate. I worked at the Tokyo law firm of Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu in 1994 and 1995. I became a partner at WSGR in 2001.

Mostly during the IPO bubble era, I represented the issuer or the underwriter in the IPOs for Biopsys, Blaze Software, broadcast.com, Chemoil Energy, Convergent Group, Corsair, Ditech, drugstore.com, First Virtual, Hambrecht & Quist Group, Newgen Results, Packeteer, PeoplePC, Ramp Networks, Terayon, and Xylan.

I have represented companies that have been sold to Access, Cadence, EA, Earthlink, Fox Interactive Media, McAfee, Microsoft, Namco, Novellus, Nvidia, Winbond, Yahoo!, and many others.

I also lead Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s Japan practice. I generally claim that I speak Japanese well enough to get married (as my wife is a Japanese national). I was allowed to take Japanese in college as a second language and took enough classes to get a minor. I advise U.S. companies on their transactions in Japan (typically joint ventures and acquisitions), and Japanese companies on their transactions in the United States (typically acquisitions and investments). I recently represented Savvian, LLC, a San Francisco-based investment bank on its $780 million merger of equals with GCA Holdings, a Japanese investment bank. This was the first transaction where a Japanese publicly-traded company acquired a U.S. company in a tax-free pooling transaction in a joint kabushiki iten structure, and the only similar transaction was completed in 1990. I also advise numerous companies with operations in Asia and have experience with complex cross-border IPOs. I represented Chemoil Energy on its IPO on the Singapore Exchange in December 2006 and have been advising several companies on potential IPOs on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. I recently represented a Korean company acquire a Nasdaq-listed Bermuda company with operations in Hong Kong and Shenzen.

In 2008, I’ve been incorporating a lot of new startup companies, many of which have completed angel or venture financings.  I meet with or talk to several entrepreneurs each week and end up representing some of them if I think they have potential or I like the team.  I’ve also represented venture funds in various financings. I recently helped a couple of Facebook apps get sold, which has caused me to consider writing an app myself.  I’ve also sold a couple of companies and bought a couple of companies over the last few months.

I am on the advisory boards of the Strategic Venture Association and the Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society at Stanford. I am on the board of the Japanese American Chamber of Commerce of Silicon Valley and am a founder of the N! Leadership Network.

In my free time, I like playing tennis and occasionally play golf. I watch more television than most people I know and I plan to work on my Madden skills on the Playstation 3.