Reminds me of how we got money for our first servers for Publictivity.  We were in between brainstorms and went down to Publix to get beer since we knew it was going to be a late night of mockups/product specs/ brainstorms,etc.  It was a couple of weeks before the superbowl and Publix had a "win tickets to the superbowl contest" going on where you had to show that you were a passionate NFL fan for your favorite team.  No one else competed, so they asked us two days before the superbowl to go compete in front of a few hundred people + NFL stars to win those tickets.  We were pretty excited, because we knew those tickets were worth a few grand.  We could use that to pay our server bills+other costs.  So, we went.  I had the routine of eating a cake in under a minute and getting everybody hyped up.  I didn't win.  Frank had the routine of shaving the Dolphins logo into his chest and being the number one Dolfan:<p>Video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/publictivity#p/u/2/DP3WtwwoarE" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/user/publictivity#p/u/2/DP3WtwwoarE</a><p><i>Frank won</i>. We hawked the tickets on the day of the superbowl for about $3,400 or so.  It paid for our original servers + development servers for the next year.  The money was minimal though helpful, but moreso the story is one worth a whole lot more.