Are you a single founder ?
daveungerer: 1) Registered the domain in Aug 2008 to do market research and to decide whether I wanted to go ahead with it.  That was followed by minor prototyping and learning about the industry.  Started working on it full-time a year ago.2) Never applied.  I'm not in the USA anyway.3) Nope.  One of my first customers did want to invest, but I didn't need it.4) http://www.simplepay.co.za (Online payroll software.  Not really applicable if you're not South African.  For now...)