37 Signals had a competition of sorts to test their prospective designers. From the A Battle on the Verizon:

As part of our search for the new member of the 37signals team, I asked a select group of finalists to redesign the Verizon Wireless homepage in 5 days (note, the home page I linked to was the original one they were asked to work from -- Verizon has since redesigned their home page). I gave them no directions -- except to make it better in their eyes.

Design 1, Design 2, Design 3, Design 4, Design 5, Design 6, Design 7