Quit your day job

Among last year's bumper crop of companies with revenues of less than $10 million that went public, there is perhaps none more implausible than Kevin Doyle's Caribbean Cigar Co. A connoisseur of cigars, Doyle got into the cigar business after he bought a box of cigars at wholesale and began selling them, at retail, from the back of his truck. He later opened a small retail store in the Florida Keys called Caribbean Cigars. Serendipitously, an investor took note of the store and told Doyle how he might make millions with an IPO. Doyle's team planned to price the offering at $5 a share, but broker interest bumped the price to $7. When the price moved quickly to $10, Doyle's net worth, at least on paper, stood just shy of $20 million.