Yeah, I think the first email I dropped was to this guy who owned a small company we had been a client of in an earlier role. He invited me up to lunch and was there with his (later) COO. It was basically a casual interview. Later, we discussed some contract work but he basically decided to just hire me. Which was nice because it was basically nuclear winter during dot-bomb--nothing else that even vaguely resembled a lead.

I think this sort of thing bugs a lot of people here because they think that some sort of theoretical skill assessment should be what matters. But that's not how the world works for the most part.