Ask HN: Our only salesperson was working for a competitor. Advice?

  • Posted 16 hours ago by betrayawayed555
  • 9 points
We recently discovered that our sole sales employee - a remote, highly trusted team member - had been secretly working with a competitor for over 16 months, possibly longer, potentially spanning their entire tenure with us. This was all while under a full-time employment agreement with a non-compete clause (covering both during and post-employment).

We’re a small Canadian B2B SaaS company (< 20 people), incorporated in one province, with this employee based in another. They attended trade shows representing the competitor (while claiming they were there on our behalf or calling in sick). They serviced inbound leads for the competitor during our workday, likely used our ZoomInfo subscription for their benefit, and were in a position to divert leads without our knowledge. The list goes on.

We were genuinely on good terms - we liked them, trusted them, and thought we had a solid relationship. The only concerns were performance-related, which we had chalked up to market conditions.

As we were preparing to let them go, they caught wind and rage-quit, with claims of harassment and constructive dismissal.

Fellow founders: What would you do? Move on? Investigate further? Settle? Escalate? Have you dealt with a trusted employee quietly working for a competitor?

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