Even though this was just a fluff PR piece, there is a hint of the kind of entrepreneurial creativity story that first drew me to HN.
> To get customers to come into the first Home Depot store, Marcus gave away cash.
Golly gee, seems't the ancient hardware startups aren't so different from today's computer startups!
It reminds me of the grossly fabricated download numbers some open-source software products boast of to give the impression of a large user base. Not sure if it really works when they add four zeroes.