jeff_lebowski

Back in the nineties when I was bouncing between various established companies and startups I witnessed two nearly identical scenarios. In both cases the established company won the lawsuit against the startup and its founders.

It is true that in California your employer cannot prevent you from working on outside projects even if they compete with the companies products. They are also able to recruit colleagues. However, that activity must be outside working hours and not utilize company resources or IP. In one of the cases the company discovered the business plan for the startup was written using a company computer during business hours. And then they discovered a receipt for copy of one of the recruited engineer's engineering notebook dated the day before he quit. The startup had to pay hundreds of millions in damages and went out of business.

In short, the devil is in the details. There are California laws that protect startup founders but they're not a get out of jail free card.