I wholeheartedly agree. I don’t mean to suggest an ignorance is bliss approach, only that if you employer does not have a need to know, you don’t need to go parading around that your employment there has an expiration date of your side project’s profitability.

As for those types of contracts assigning tech IP to $dayjob, that’s what I was alluding to. If you have one of those, unfortunately you cannot start a business without risking $dayjob wanting a piece (or all of it). Regardless of how often they stand up in court or are even tentatively enforced, I wouldn’t want to risk it.