I know of three startups looking for kick-ass developers to join their team in very high level positions (CTO, VP of Engineering and Sr. Architect). If you know anyone ready to make the jump from BigCo into the startup world let me know and I'll give the info.
Just to be clear to my friends at Microsoft (or any other big company), being a VP of Engineering has nothing to do with being a VP at Microsoft. A VP of Engineering (or CTO, or Architect) at a startup is a very hands-on person, writing code, installing servers, design and implementing features, architecting components, testing it, etc. The ratio of "useful production" to "management crap" is very low.