Ask HN: How can I work towards building a company while employed?

Here is what I'd do.

* Pick a tech stack and get really good at it. You can do it at your company's time and equipment as it is gaining knowledge.

* Give yourself 6 months to blog and contribute to open source on your own laptop. Get something decent to get started. If you feel buying a Macbook Pro or a similar Dev laptop is a huge expense, look for options to rent it in the short term. Consistency is key, ensure that you are pushing out a new post every week.

* Get into a freelancing gig where you are able to set your own times. This will give you a sense of business priorities and how to pitch and get clients. Conduct trainings and workshops and charge market rates for your expertise.

* Then if you really find a problem that needs more than your mind and two hands to solve, by all means setup a company, hire people and do things. As a developer looking for freedom from the man, freelancing is a good way to gain that freedom. Your own employer might hire you on your terms for twice the pay he is paying you currently.

Several books on this precise topic, The 10% Entrepreneur is one of the best, full of useful info and practical examples. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01AXE98UA/ref=dp-kindle-redirec...

Re 1: put yourself first when it comes to careers. As long as you are putting in the required number of hours (physically and mentally) at your employer, there's nothing wrong with spending your free time on your own projects.

The big risk isn't that they sue you, it's that various collaborators you need to make the company a massive success (investors, cofounders, acquirers) will not want to do business with you if your IP and legal paperwork isn't "clean". This sort of stuff comes out in due diligence. You don't want to pour your soul into a company for years, actually build up a business to the point where it's a success, and then find that a potential acquirer passes on the deal because they noticed your commit history overlapped with the dates of employment of your past employer.

> a bunch of contract clauses that basically lets the company own all IP while employed.

This is default here as well (Germany), but I only interpret this as stuff done during work time. So the stuff I come up with and the code I write at the office on my workstation is automatically owned by my employee. That's fine, because if it wasn't, that would cause all kinds of legal trouble should I ever leave the company.

But if I create things in my free time at home, on my own equipment, then that's MINE, and I might start a company from it -- the only trouble might come if there is reason to believe I stole code/trade secrets (e.g. starting a company in the same niche) or my employee might assume I worked on my it during my paid hours (e.g. all of a sudden bootstrapping a 100 employee company, while getting paid 40h a week until yesterday).

Of course your contract is probably very different, but I have a difficult time imagining that what you're doing in your unpaid time is owned by your employee. Logic here is: You're paid to work a specified time of hours per time interval (e.g. 40h/week). What you do there is owned by your boss. Then if your boss wanted to own all you do/come up with outside of that time, he would need to buy that time from you as well. E.g. to own all you come up with, even in your sleep, you should be eligible for a 7*24h/week compensation. Of course this is more morals than law, but well, maybe you just misinterpreted the wording?

//edit: Mind the discussion below this thread. IANAL, and my moral point of view might not match the legal reality.