Many of our clients and friends know that, in addition to alto, we are heavily involved in helping Haiti.  Josh and I are founders and Board members of Mangrove Fund (along with my wife and Peter Galen, a close friend of alto and us personally).  Mangrove is a Portland-based 501(c)(3) public charity.  We have been focused exclusively on Haiti since our inception in 2007.  I’m not going to go into too much detail on Mangrove here.  If you want to learn more about us, click here.

Since the devastating 7.0 quake hit Haiti on January 12, Mangrove has kicked into high gear.  In the first two weeks following the quake I basically worked almost every waking hour on Mangrove.  Thankfully, every member of the alto team has stepped up to help, whether by spearheading the administrative side of capturing donations and email addresses, to running fundraising events, to covering me on some of our client needs while I was out promoting our fund and cause.  It has felt great to have a team not only pull together for the legal work we do on a daily basis but also truly show their dedication and teamwork when working on something like Mangrove – an initiative for which none of us get paid.

It has also been inspiring to see the large number of our clients, colleagues (even competitors), and partners who have helped Mangrove.  Karin McKercher, an attorney at Ater Wynne, has been great both in terms of getting us on people’s radar and writing this great blog post that really does a good job of talking about all of the help we’ve gotten thus far.  Obviously we can’t capture everyone who has donated, provided advice, or otherwise helped in a single article.  These people have been invaluable to us.  In many ways, Mangrove is a start-up and, like every other start-up, getting the right people on the bus has made our success possible.

Another great experience I’ve had during this process has been tapping into the creative talents of the entrepreneurial community.  People like Carrie Atkinson, founder of Sock It To Me, and Karen and Aaron of Delta Café have developed and run some great fundraisers for us.

This brings me to the next event we are doing.  John Friess has led the charge and was the initial inspiration.  In the past, his organization, Starve-Ups, ran a fundraising event called Build a Business in a Day.  Modeled after “The Apprentice”, Starve-Ups raised thousands of dollars for victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Tsunami.  When I was talking to John about Haiti and Mangrove, I could almost see the synapses firing as he quickly threw out ideas for what we could do.  The result (still in progress) has been an event that is being promoted and supported by virtually every technology-related organization in Portland and many individual companies.  We think it is going to be a great event for us not only from a dollar perspective but also just to keep the energy and focus on Haiti.  If you are in Portland, please check out this event and sign up for a team.  It will create team-building and test the sales and marketing skills of everyone involved.  Prizes will include some great merchandise from Columbia Sportswear and other Portland-area companies as well as a trip for one team member to travel with Mangrove to Haiti on a future work trip.  Click here for more information on the event.

The hardest thing about writing this first substantive post was deciding what to discuss.  There are so many issues happening on macro, micro, collective and individual basis that it is almost impossible to pick a first topic to address.  We are fortunate to have an amazing cadre of clients who are doing some incredible things both because of and in spite of the economic downturn that has affected all of us in some way. 

So to make it easy, I’ve decided to focus this initial post on alto itself.  Since our launch in early 2006, we’ve grown as an organization in many ways.  I’m not going to turn this into a full history review.  Rather, I want to talk just a bit about where we are as we move into 2010.  Many of our goals for the year are the natural outgrowth of our clients’ goals.  In many ways, we go as our clients go.  That is an important part of alto.  We have always maintained the desire to sit alongside our clients as valued partners, and not simply outsourced service providers.  Therefore our optimism for steady growth commencing in 2010 is a direct result of the expectations of our clients.

We started 2010 as a more robust and capable firm than we were at the start of 2009.  We brought on Steve James as an associate.  Steve came to us from Nike and has jumped head first into our sometimes fast-paced practice.  He will be assisting us in all aspects of the services we offer to our clients.  We feel fortunate to have him on board.

We’ve also moved offices.  We’ve expanded our space and allowed for further growth.  The best part (albeit unexpected) is our location directly across the street from the enormously popular food carts at on Alder between SW 9^th and 10^th Avenues.  It’s the best $6.00 you can spend in Portland. 

We have broadened our relationships with experts in areas such as trademarks, tax, litigation, bankruptcy and patent prosecution, thereby permitting us to provide a true full service offering to our client base.  Doing it through outsourced relationships with experienced third parties allows this to happen in a cost effective manner as we do not assume the overhead of the additional firepower.  

A newly revamped alto website launched in mid January.  We wanted to provide a clearer message about the services we offer to companies at varying stages of their life cycle.  Therefore, the description of our services is bifurcated into services dedicated to Emerging Businesses and services dedicated to Established Businesses.  The website now reflects more accurately how we work and serve our clients. 

In terms of our practice, we will continue to provide a broad swath of legal services to industry leading clients, primarily in the areas of technology, social media, and interactive design.  As indicated on our website, this includes both large and small ventures.  Timely, for this posting, we are starting to see activity increase for both of these client types.  For instance, we currently have 5 emerging clients who are in the process of obtaining legitimate venture capital or angel investing.  We saw little appetite for this type of financing last year other than under very draconian terms.  We are also seeing fewer bankruptcies and foreclosures as things start to stabilize.  Finally, the slow but noticeable increase in IT-related and capital infrastructure spending that is just starting to be undertaken by our established clients is not only an indication of their emerging confidence in the economic climate, but it is also likely to have a beneficial trickle-down effect on our smaller clients which sell into these larger organizations.