I worked in a consulting company in my country of origin and I was bootstrapping a startup in the meanwhile. A few weeks ago I moved to another job in another country. Now I have to close my startup because my employer does not allow it.

There are posts like this one http://blog.asmartbear.com/working-startup.html that tell you that usually things go well in this regard. While I don't doubt it, it wasn't my case. If you want to start a startup while employed, be very careful on this matter.

Actually everything seemed ok with this at first. I was hired in my current position because of my startup (I have an iPhone developer position here and the only iPhone development I ever made was in my startup) and during the interview I was asked if I wanted to continue to keep my startup after switching job. I answered yes to that question and there wasn't any issue about it.

I received my contract just a few days before leaving my country and there was a non competitive clause on it. Nothing strange, only a clause stating I can't compete with my employer while I am employed and I was in no way competing. So everything looked fine to me.

But when I got here I discovered that I'm not allowed to do any development out of the company, for myself or for anyone else, in any form (paid or free, open source or not), even if it is not competing in any way with this company. This is because they think that this would take my focus from my current job and since they give me a good salary and enough interesting challenges in my job, I don't need anything else (these are exactly their words).

I think this is very stupid and inconsistent. Stupid because I can just find any other passion that can take my focus from my job, or just get drunk every night (they actually encourage parties and drinking!). Inconsistent because they hire people that did extra projects out of their previous jobs. Then, when you are here, they forbid it. I think that as hackers you can imagine all the other flaws in this way of thinking and why it actually hurts all their company (which is mainly made of developers).

Let me tell you that it really hurts to close a startup and to give up all your work not because it failed but just because someone compels you to do so. Not because I was getting some big money from it (actually I still had to break even) but just because I did it for passion. I share the fault because I didn't ask to make everything clear before coming here, but given the premises everything seemed ok to me and I really wanted to leave my country so I overlooked this matter.

Actually I'm not in the position to challenge this decision and I can't just switch to another job, so for now I have to suck it and stop everything. As soon as I will be in a better position I will start looking for a job with better conditions for me (actually this is a very good job, but I really can't stand this stupid rule that controls what I can do with my spare time).

I just wanted to warn you. I hope that this will be useful for somebody.