Comment by zmmmmm

Honestly there is nothing technically or legally wrong but I would say this was bad faith by the intern in a minor way. Like, its just not nice nor smart to do things that act against the interests of those that have put faith and trust in you. In this case, he's created a web site that at a surface level makes Replit look trivial to implement - boasts that in a weekend or two he's supported massively more languages. And absolutely, part of his knowledge as to how to do it came from what he probably learned there. So intentionally or not, he's done something that hurts the interests of his former employer.

So if you hired an electrician to fix a light bulb and then after they left they told everyone your house sucked. Illegal? no. Unprofessional? yes, slightly. Would you hire them again? no. Would you sue them? that would be ridiculous.

On balance, the CEO is clearly the one more in the wrong here and definitely acting in a dumb way. I would run away from investing in this company with him at the helm. But I would say there is a little bit of bad faith on the other side here too.