Applications Open For Summer 2011 YC Funding Cycle

First of all, many jurisdictions make it hard for employers to try to control things you invent on your own time without using their facilities -- which doesn't keep employers from trying.

Secondly, even if your employer arguably does control the IP you need, that doesn't mean they won't give it up. Woz famously realized that HP had a claim to the Apple I and offered to let them have it; HP thought of it as more of a hobby than a business and the rest is history.

Universities and other research institutes routinely let employees spin off companies, usually in exchange for some share (although, anecdotally, it seems that universities that are new to the game often ask for more than universities that already have strong spin-off cultures).

Eight years without going anywhere worth speaking of is time to call it quits, if what you want is a startup. Don't let old mistakes hold you back. I shutdown a seven year old business after its most profitable year in existence in order to start Virtualmin, because I made a rational assessment of where things were going and could see very clearly that the previous business would never be the business I wanted it to be, and because it had such a long, slow-climb, history, raising money for it or bringing in new partners would have been a challenge that new startups don't face. Unproven is better than "proven to grow slowly" for investors and entrepreneurs.

The group actually changed a bit from one application to the next. The ideas were completely different for the first and second applications. Applications three and lucky number four were for PagerDuty.