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Comment by bix6 | Hacker News Reader

Can shareholders sue? I presume the only avenue is IP since that belongs to the company? Or the non-exclusive license somehow negates that? Brutal.

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I actually don't know if there's much that can be done unless there's some non-competes in those employees' contracts which are usually not very enforceable outside of finance iirc.

Non competes aren’t enforceable in California but the company owns the IP so I’m curious about this license loophole they are using.

Non competes can definitely be enforceable in California for executives and those with fiduciary responsibilities to a company.

They’re just not enforceable against “rank and file” employees.

The only situation I know of is during a sale of business if the seller agrees. Which is clearly not the case here.

Is there any IP that's actually valuable without the team ? I sincerely doubt it.

The whole point of funding a company is for the company to build IP that makes the company valuable. Founders can't take investor money and then just go start another company -- that's specifically barred in most docs. There have been a lot of these weird "loopholes" lately that are completely against the spirit of company building.

The real IP is between the ears...

“We underpaid you relative to what price you were able to command on the market, and you left, how DARE you!”

“We spent our time and money helping you and now you leave taking everything with you and leaving us with nothing”

You think the only people in a company that matter are a few founders? It’s ok to screw over everyone else?

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