UUNET
The non-profit set up to relieve one overloaded Usenet hub that ended up as one of the world's largest internet providers.
Rick Adams ran seismo, one of the most important hubs for Usenet and UUCP mail, and by 1987 the traffic had become too much for a machine that really belonged to a seismic research centre. The fix was UUNET Communications Services, a non-profit that sold UUCP links, email and news feeds to companies and organisations that couldn't get onto ARPANET or NSFNET.
In 1990 UUNET launched AlterNet, a TCP/IP network for the commercial traffic that NSFNET's acceptable use policy barred. That made it one of the first commercial internet providers, and it duly converted into a for-profit company. After an IPO and a string of acquisitions it ended up inside WorldCom and then Verizon. A project to take load off one computer finished as a large chunk of the internet backbone.