Ask HN: How to resign from a small company?

Hi all,

I have been working at a small company for the past three years. The company consists of eight employees. A high school friend hired me and then we both eventually hired our third friend. So, three of the eight employees (including me) are high school friends. The three of us have been talking about starting our own company for a long time. We feel like we're in a good position to do so, right now. We've spent some time outside of work building a prototype and have presented it to some potential customers and they're wanting to pay for it.

How do we resign from this company in the best possible way?

We carry the majority of the work-load, here. Our boss moved away and does not even communicate with us more than once a week. He attempted to sell the company, with no success. So, we're all kind of sitting in limbo wondering what the plan for the future is. Our boss is a very temperamental person and somewhat of a loose cannon. The product that we're developing outside of work is in the same space as the company we work at, now. No, we do not have a non-compete or NDA formally signed. We did not verbally agree to anything, either. (These are all parts of the reasons we want to move on, also.) I cannot honestly see us quitting going over very smoothly, but it's something that I feel that I personally need to do. My future is stagnating here and I'm not learning anything. I'm facing a great opportunity to do something that I've been reading about other people doing, for the past two years since I found Hacker News.

Do you think there is any legal problems with three of us quitting, even if we stagger it out over a period of one or two months? It'll be a big blow to this company, but staying here is a bigger blow to our futures.