I went on a few 24 hour online poker binges to pay the rent. I won a lot, but had to borrow money from my parents because it took over a week to cash-out.
Also drove to Foxwoods to play poker once with my co-founder when we were particularly desperate. We only had enough money for one buy-in ($300). Figured that if I was asking my parents for money again, asking for an extra $300 was worth the risk, if I had a chance to win and not ask for anything.
Bill also took random jobs on Craigslist (helping people set up pod-casts, writing papers for wealthy foreign students, etc.)
I taught the LSAT and did "law school admission consulting" which basically translated to helping people write personal statements.
Startups do two things: they build product and they sell it (get people to use it).
A lot of non-technical aspiring entrepreneurs miss this point. They think that you build a product and you do "business stuff". They fail to realize that "business stuff" invariably boils down to one thing: sales (at least in the early days of the company).
I think the two most desired skills in a tech startup is the ability to program and the ability to sell.
I can imagine a similar thread about threewords.me if it had been implemented by somebody else, and failed rather than "succeeded".