Being permanently online, I saw MDH quite early on and when it began to get some initial press mentions, I figured it might go big. I hit up a friend/client of mine - Ben Neumann (RIP) - who was CEO of Globat, a hosting company. He was hugely into guerilla marketing techniques (like paying a guy to have their logo as a tattoo or sneaking a Saddam Hussein themed ad into a popular computer magazine - a story in itself) so this was totally up his street and he immediately bought the large space now marked "FREE HOSTING" in the top middle.
At the time, Globat used to pay quite juicy commissions to folks for hosting referrals (equivalent to about the whole first year of hosting fees) so even if he ended up with 50 signups from it, it would have broken even.