Q:

Buying Internet hosting from an academic institution

Back in the nineties, before hosted servers were readily available, some Internet companies like Yahoo and Google got started in universities, using the institution's servers and Internet bandwidth, moving out when they went commercial. That would seem to need a pretty big jump, going from zero income to enough to pay e.g. five grand a month for a T1 line in one shot, which would seem to create a strong need to find venture capital.
Suppose the founders of such a startup, in a university in the nineties, wanted to bootstrap, so they made a suggestion to their host institution: we want to experiment with going commercial, finding ways to monetize our startup, with small amounts of income at first. We can't reasonably use your facilities for free once we go commercial, so can we pay you for continued hosting, some amount that should be a lot cheaper than getting a T1.
Would such an offer be accepted? Is there anything I'm missing?

A:

Within the United States, universities help startups in many different ways. This includes "internal" startups that are created by students and faculty as well as "external" startups that are created by university outsiders but receive support from a University. 

Google initially had an "exclusive licensing partnership" with Stanford. As noted in a Wall Street Journal Article, this deal paid off well for Stanford. 
Academic researchers and students can be encouraged to do technology transfers and "commercialization" of research. This can be within the University or outside of the University. For example the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation got started because the University did not want to help support a professor's efforts to sell his research. As another example, Texas Tech has an Office of Research Commercialization to help within the university.
Universities can also have incubators such as Univeristy Research Park in Madison, WI. Incubators such as these can help startups overcome the hurdles you mention.

