

Ask HN: How do you protect your IP in a startup? - skennedy

Hopefully, the co-founders have completely vetted a person when adding members to the startup team. References, coding tests, thorough interview, etc. But what happens when they actually need to start working? You are probably handing them keys to the entire kingdom because you need them in all corners of the product when it is still small.<p>While there is always the legal route, I am looking for more practical lessons learned by people who have already gone through this. Without impeding a new person's passion to jump right in and contribute immediately, how have you protected your code from being downloaded and walking away?
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composed
IP has gone "the way of the dodo", meaning become obsolete, for all digital
copyright forms including software. The solution is to develop a robust
business model that depends on generatives. See
[http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_f...](http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php).

Assume your competitors are already doing the same thing and even putting out
better code. Your business model should be robust enough to withstand this
also. Consequently, a new worker who downloads and walks away is no greater
threat than the existing competitor, assumed or real. Stronger stated... the
loss of IP and consequent spread of one of your infinite resources... why
that's beneficial advertising in this day and age. Get the business model
right, and the IP worry disappears.

Open source is like the musician giving away free mp3s. Proprietary code, and
all the IP concerns it requires, are like overpriced physical CDs from major
labels. More prosperity awaits you in the long tail and in generatives.

Best of luck!

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noonespecial
You probably can't. If the code is all you've got, someone else is probably
going to beat you anyway, especially if you're spending a bunch of time
worrying about it instead of building stuff.

Instead of paranoid maneuvering to protect something of unproven worth, spend
your time creating an awesome place to work and a business culture that treats
customers/users right and it won't matter all that much if someone steals some
code or clones your software, there's far, far more to being successful than a
few loc's.

