Frankly I'm surprised you need examples. A few companies I've worked with didn't create products, they literally created CMS based websites, and when home-time came they clocked off. I'd rather not link to them (unwanted attention). But you and I are both from London, if your view finishes with the people you meet at meetups, read about on blogs - then your seeing 2% of the actual space.
For these people its business as usual, they would I guess as you and I might say, be running on business 1.0. They haven't heard of Github, probably haven't heard of Ycombinator/HN either, or Techcrunch. And thats how they like it.
Me. I started working for myself in 2000. Certainly I've had ideas for a product, and a few that I've prototyped, but nothing more than you might expect from someone trying out a few things at home, away from their actual job.
(Strictly speaking that's not quite correct. I have released a few open source "products", but I charge no money for them. My revenue for the last 12 years is from consulting and training.)
Which, the release of open source projects, or the two weeks of work over 10 years which never went anywhere?
It feels like any number of employees who read HN are in the same category as freelancers who read HN in having any of a number of, say, github projects and ideas for products which never go anywhere.
For these people its business as usual, they would I guess as you and I might say, be running on business 1.0. They haven't heard of Github, probably haven't heard of Ycombinator/HN either, or Techcrunch. And thats how they like it.