Shane Wighton's story of getting hired at Formlabs is interesting.

He wanted to work for the company and didn't have a way in. He built a better version of their slicing software over a long weekend and sent it to the Formlabs team. He was hired very quickly after they saw it.

https://shane.engineer/blog/how-to-get-hired-at-a-startup-wh...

https://shane.engineer/stl-preprocessor

The idea of a very targeted side project seems novel. Build for an audience of 1 specific company. Any other examples?