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