Doesn't always work like that. The non-compete and conflict of interest clauses are narrower than that. In case of Amazon, they sell pretty much everything, to

Doesn't always work like that. The non-compete and conflict of interest clauses are narrower than that. In case of Amazon, they sell pretty much everything, to everyone, so you might have a conflict of interest. But if you start an e-commerce store that sell something very specific to very specific market segment than you may not have a conflict. For example, B2B marketplace for oil supply chain industry (Know a guy who does something similar). Same thing with consulting, a friend works for a consulting company that closes 1M+ projects. He on side make websites for small businesses. Everyone knows at his company, no issues so far.