Like most other tech companies, the company I work for required I sign an Intellectual Property agreement stating that any ideas or work that I produce while an employee is property of the company. So this clause would include any work related to a startup. I know, this really sucks.
PG talks about this in several essays. Basically what it sounds like is that if there is ANY indication that you started work on a startup while under an IP agreement, VCs and acquirers will simply not touch you. Has any one else found this to be the case?
From what it looks like so far, my options are:
1) Jump ship and not look back. This puts big financial strain on us though as we don't have funding yet.
2) Leave as an employee, and rejoin as a part time contractor without signing an IP agreement. This would pay the bills and rent in the early stages but would probably be pretty draining physically. I also lose my unvested shares in the company but meh.
3) The CEO will sign a document releasing our specific idea from the IP Agreement. Has anyone heard of this happening with success before??
Or we could probably just start working in secret and building the product, but this is probably not a good idea because we wouldn't have early customer feedback. I definitely believe in "release early, release often". Or an easy solution would be to get accepted into YC but I know chances of that are pretty slim :(
Any advice is appreciated.