When Carl Cavers started video games group Sumo in 2003, a friend lent him somewhere to work free of charge because he and his three co-founders could not afford to pay any rent.
None of them took a salary and early employees accepted peppercorn wages, in the hope that they could work together and build up a meaningful business.
Those hopes proved well-placed. Last week, Cavers recommended a £5.13 a share bid from Chinese tech giant Tencent, valuing Sumo at £919million.
In the bag?: Sumo, which developed Sackboy: A Big Adventure, is set to be bought by Chinese firm Tencent
Sheffield-based Sumo has clearly come a long way in the past 18 years. The group is one of the best-known games developers in the world, counting giants such as Microsoft, Sony and Apple as customers.