Attorney Profile

Yoichiro ("Yokum") Taku

Partner

Yoichiro (Yokum) Taku is a corporate and securities partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Yokum represents technology and growth companies at all stages of development, through private financings, strategic transactions, public offerings, and mergers and acquisitions. He also represents investors in venture capital financings. Yokum has advised numerous entrepreneurs from initial company formation to liquidity event. At any time, Yokum typically represents start-up companies seeking venture financing, private companies that have received financing, and publicly traded companies.

Yokum also leads Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's Japan practice. He advises U.S. companies on their transactions in Japan, and Japanese companies on their transactions in the United States. Yokum also advises numerous companies with operations in Asia. Yokum worked at the Tokyo law firm of Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu in 1994 and 1995.

Yokum maintains a personal blog at www.startupcompanylawyer.com.

SELECT CLIENTS:

• 9gag (humor website)
• AngelPad (start-up incubator)
• Bromium (micro-virtualization security software)
• Chill (video discovery)
• CrowdStrike (security technology)
• DeNA (mobile social games)
• The Founder Institute (start-up accelerator)
• GCA Savvian (investment bank)
• Gengo (language translation platform)
• MoPub (mobile app ad management)
• VantagePoint Venture Partners (venture fund)
• Vivante (semiconductor graphics processing unit)

SELECT TRANSACTIONS:

• Represented companies that have been sold to Access, Apple, Cadence, EA, Earthlink, Facebook, Fox Interactive Media, Intel, McAfee, Microsoft, Namco, Novellus, Nvidia, RockYou, Winbond, Yahoo!, Zynga, and many others
• Represented issuer or underwriter in 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.

EDUCATION:

• J.D., University of Chicago Law School, 1993
• B.A., Political Science, University of Minnesota, 1990

HONORS:

• Named in the 2013 and 2014 editions of Northern California Super Lawyers

ASSOCIATIONS AND MEMBERSHIPS:

• Former Chairman, Angel Venture Financing Subcommittee of the American Bar Association Business Law Section Committee on Venture Capital and Private Equity
• Advisor, Stanford Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneur Society
• Former President and Board Member, Asian Law Alliance

ADMISSIONS:

• State Bar of California

• Videos
• Documents