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John Yates, a top tech attorney with Atlanta law firm Morris, Manning & Martin, often more
Bay Area residents have long seen the newspaper ads and billboards from other states and cities eager to persuade the region"s employers that they should be doing business elsewhere.
There was Fargo, N.D."s pitch to Bay Area businesses that looked likely to prove six degrees of separation. (That city"s average temperature in January is just six degrees.) Then there"s our neighbor to the north, Canada, that isn"t about to pass up an opportunity to give its tech sector a boost.
John Yates, a top tech attorney with Atlanta law firm Morris, Manning & Martin, often more
The nation that makes Fargo look downright balmy in January at one point posted a billboard along a Silicon Valley highway letting immigrant tech workers know that if they can"t get visas to work in the United States, well, welcome to Canada.
Often the courtship between economic recruiters wooing Bay Area businesses occurs behind closed doors. But Atlanta-based RentPath"s decision this week to close up shop in San Francisco led to an opportunity to speak with one of the top tech attorneys in Georgia"s capital city. (Full disclosure: I"m a former business reporter in Atlanta and the city remains one of my favorites.)
I was eager to hear details of his Atlanta pitch, the tech sectors that he"s targeting in the Bay Area, and the questions he gets about doing business in his hometown.
As for the pitch, I asked him whether he just tells Bay Area tech employers the median salary for tech workers in Atlanta, case closed.
"The salary differential is a well-known story," said John Yates, head of the technology group at Atlanta law firm Morris, Manning & Martin. He spends a lot of time telling Atlanta"s story, rattling off a list of strengths: the nation"s busiest airport and all the flights that come with that designation, mild weather and a burgeoning tech sector.
In speaking with Yates and a tech worker who recently moved from the Bay Area to Atlanta, it was surprising how quickly they conceded that the Bay Area is a special place.
"There"s no other place quite like Silicon Valley," Yates said, adding that he has been impressed with the region"s startup ecosystem since his first visit here in 1979 to see his sister, who was involved in a tech startup.
And before alarms start ringing in the Bay Area, Zillow (NASDAQ: ZG) Chief Economist Svenja Gudell, who tracks migration patterns and home prices, says, "For every two people you hear are leaving San Francisco for Portland or Seattle, there are three others moving to the Bay Area."
That"s not deterring Yates. He has played an unofficial role as an ambassador for Atlanta"s business community for more than three decades and isn"t shy about touting his hometown. He has scheduled about 25 meetings that will involve connecting with approximately 60 business leaders while he"s in town next week. He"s spending half his time in San Francisco and the rest essentially as a door-to-door salesman among the venture capital firms that line Sand Hill Road.
"Venture capitalists tell us they like to start companies in Silicon Valley and grow them in Atlanta," Yates says proudly.
For good reason, Bay Area residents cast a wary eye on visitors from the South eager to demonstrate a little southern hospitality. After all, a visit almost 20 years ago from one of the South"s biggest cheerleaders, banker Hugh McColl, ended up with him taking the Bank of America name and headquarters back home with him to Charlotte.
Then there"s the then-governor of Texas, Rick Perry, whose recruiting forays into California became so frequent that the Bay Area Council issued a press release urging him to go home already. That was back in 2014 just hours before Perry delivered his formal remarks at the Commonwealth Club that included comparing homosexuality to alcoholism.
His analysis sparked an audible gasp from the audience and reminded many why they don"t live in the Lone Star State.
This month, it appeared that word of last summer"s Supreme Court decision making gay marriage a national right hasn"t yet reached Alabama, or at least that state"s Chief Justice Roy Moore, who recently advised probate judges to stop issuing same-s*x marriage licenses.
And as Alabama goes, so goes California in the opposite direction.
"Social issues rarely come up because Atlanta is known as a pro-business city that supports diversity," said Yates, who acknowledges that there are strongly held opinions on both sides of these controversial issues in Georgia, just as there are across the country.
Atlanta"s business community has a long history of supporting civil rights, often looking at mistakes and missteps made by other cities in deciding how to navigate the issues. Yates was eager to tout this month"s efforts by a business group, Georgia Prospers, that"s drawing supporters from the city"s business community to ward off efforts to make discrimination against LGBT customers legal, echoing the controversy in Indiana that had Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) CEO Marc Benioff planning to airlift affected employees out of that state as part of an effective campaign to fight discriminatory legislation.
The Georgia Prospers initiative has garnered support from major Atlanta employers, including Coca-Cola, (NYSE: KO) of course, as well as Home Depot, (NYSE: HD) Delta Air Lines, (NYSE: DAL) Google, (NASDAQ: GOOG) Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Wells Fargo. (NYSE: WFC)
"From our burgeoning status as the Hollywood of the East Coast, to new companies moving here and other companies growing here we all win when our state can attract and retain good businesses and entrepreneurs," touts the Georgia Prospers website, which notes that "Georgia"s business owners understand the fundamental value that"s at the bedrock of our society: We always have to treat others the way we"d want to be treated."
I asked Yates what tech sectors are on his calling card.
"Fintech is big for us, especially in payments," he said before moving on to Atlanta"s strengths in cybersecurity, data analytics and health-care technology.
Asked what he considers to be Atlanta"s sharpest rivals in winning Bay Area jobs, Yates rattles off a number of cities and their disadvantages in the good-natured spirit that one might also use to defend their favorite sports team.
"There"s Dallas-Fort Worth, but then you"re in Texas; there"s Austin, still in Texas; Boston, the weather; D.C., nice weather but it does get very hot," Yates says.
I asked Yates whether his mission reflects the attitude of Texans, who upon hearing that Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW) was moving jobs from San Francisco to their state, urged the brokerage firm to move the jobs but keep the Californians. Yates laughed and said that it"s often a mix of transferring key employees to Atlanta while hiring others locally.
There"s definitely the demand for tech talent. When Yates once alerted his LinkedIn network of some tech talent moving from the Bay Area to Atlanta, he promptly got 40 responses that echoed the first missive: "Please send them to me."
Yates told me of one couple, a husband and wife who work as product designers in technology.
"They want to start a family and own a home. That can happen in Atlanta," Yates said.
I decided to hear firsthand from these folks, so I called 31-year-old Chase Curry, whose wife is expecting their first child. They moved back to Atlanta in October, after spending two years here, trading life in San Francisco"s Hayes Valley neighborhood for their home in Atlanta"s historic Kirkwood neighborhood.
Curry, who works for GoPro, (NASDAQ: GPRO) said he had to defend the decision to return to Atlanta with some of his Bay Area friends and colleagues.
"I was born and raised in the South, and there were things I missed. When you grow up in a place, there are small, subtle things that you don"t realize you"re going to miss," Curry said. "Atlanta is essentially a forest with tall buildings scattered about.
"One thing I missed was hearing crickets chirp when I went to bed at night," Curry said.
No doubt, there will be plenty of Bay Area economic development officials eager to tell the region"s tech leaders that Atlanta is the place to be if they want to hear crickets chirp. (With apologies to all my friends in Atlanta.)
Mark covers banking and finance.Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/blog/techflash/2016/01/a-peek-into-a-top-tech-attorneys-pitch-to-lure.html
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