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Comment by patrickmay | Hacker News Reader

Limited non-compete agreements have value to startups. It's not unreasonable to want to protect the company's intellectual property, business plans, product roadmap, marketing strategy, etc. from someone who comes in, works for six months, and leaves to start a competitor.

Certainly large companies are abusing these agreements. However, so long as the non-compete is agreed at the time of hiring, is restricted to a year or so, and isn't so broad as to prevent the (ex-)employee from taking any new job, it doesn't make sense for a startup not to ask for one as part of the employment offer.

Of course, like any other part of the employment agreement, non-competes are subject to negotiation.

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> Limited non-compete agreements have value to startups.

Perhaps, but I often get the impression that startups think that they've got some kind of valuable secret methodology that is leagues better than everyone else. I feel that this is a really silly notion. Your startup is not a special snowflake. In fact, it's very likely to end in failure. It's the game we all play as entrepreneurs.

Success is largely determined by talent, excellent execution, a clear vision/direction, and strong leadership at the helm. These aren't really trade secrets, it's just hard work, focus, and even some luck.

Seeing a non-compete at a startup says to me that the founders are worrying about silly stuff like this instead of pushing forward into excellence.

I completely agree, I've worked at 4 different start-ups and the successful ones weren't about ideas, they were about hard work and talent.

It's not unreasonable to want to protect the company's intellectual property

Even in the absence of a non-compete, you can still sign a NDA, and in the event of a disclosure or misappropriation, you can be sued into a pile of primordial ooze.

> Yeah, many of us did exactly that back in 2007/2008. We nominated and worked hard to promote and to get elected a politician we believed -- based on our candidate's deeply-persuasive statements -- who would be "different". We did much more than vote. We built amazing software systems for our candidate, went door-to-door in places that almost got us shot, worked 80 hour weeks at the grass roots level, and in some cases estranged ourselves from our families. And of course we voted for him.

There are separate laws protecting IP directly, so you don't need a non-compete to do that any more than you do to protect company physical property. And specific restrictions on the use of proprietary information that isn't IP in the strict sense are often enforceable when non-competes (provision prohibiting someone from working in a particular field or capacity) are not.

Agreed 100%. It may not be fully enforceable but it certainly helps startups to protect their IPs to some extent.

I'd argue, that any startup with such attitude has now IP worth protecting. Same goes for NDA.

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