- One of the reasons people join startups is when they want to start one someday. While California has great protections for people to retain IP as long as it's not directly in conflict with their employer's line of work, the rest of the world is not so lucky. How about requiring all your portfolio companies to be explicitly side project friendly by adopting something like Github's IP agreement. Keep it simple : allow employees to work on their side projects on their own time using their own resources and as long as it's not directly competing, it's all good. This seems to be the implicit understanding already, but make it formal and set a good example for the industry to follow. More Context : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921433 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142327
- Any chance of expanding this to international remote workers? There are obvious legal challenges to hiring someone from a different jurisdiction, but maybe you can start out with simpler solutions like a having a standard legal template by hiring international remote workers as contractors which greatly simplifies the paperwork?