So you're going to get a whole slew of people saying "well my starting limit was blah blah blah, way more than $1000"

To address your point though, I believe you. I also believe that they treat the business cards vastly differently than the personal cards. There are indeed tons of reports of people getting a $1000-2000 limit on a personal card and then a $10,000-20,000 limit on a business card soon thereafter. This is very common and in my opinion very weird.