Startup Activity in the Bay Area is Insane

If you had any doubt that the level of startup activity in the Bay Area had reached epic proportions, a quick perusal of craigslist should set you straight.

I was recently looking through craigslist’s Bay Area computer gigs for engineers on a project I am working on (codename: Ninja). And I was blown away by the number of people who are looking for co-founders for their burgeoning startups on craigslist. They are not looking for engineers to build out their team, they are literally looking for co-founders!

Here are five random posts from the just the last few days.

looking for co-founder – Social network startup

Looking for a technical partner to start a web-startup

Entrepreneur is looking for a technical leader/ CTO

Seeking Developers to create Killer 3g Application

Startup co-founder wanted, eBay services startup

Of course, the markets for these startups are quite large:

“The opportunity is a one-in-a-lifetime, the market is estimated at over 50 million potential users and this company may grow into a multi-billion $ corporation very fast.”

At least one of these companies imagines a Google-class upside:

“Google share reached $317 a share. Baidu.com – share went up 400% on IPO. Yahoo.com talking about buying Alibaba.com. Would you like to be the founder of the next successful web startup?”

And another one depicts a David-and-Goliath struggle

“… we are competing with a large and well funded insurance company with an anti-customer mentality.”

The good news is that in addition to the low cost of building an internet application today, I imagine that a lot of these folks are not quitting their day jobs. And I think there is a lot more room for lifestyle++ businesses on the internets.

I wish all of these companies the greatest success!