In this case, I'm talking about developing or investing in a developer to add a new revenue generating application to any one of the several general purpose blockchain platforms you can probably think of.
The general idea is that the investor/developer builds the DAPP and offers to plug it into the platform and share its revenue with the platform owners. If the platform makes it easier for entrepreneurs to do this, then all kinds of new business models are likely to get implemented on that platform, making it more attractive for others to use and therefore more attractive for other entrepreneurs to take up residence there.
You can either propose your own DAPP or implement one that is already on the platform's to-do list.
For example, over on the BitShares platform, we just had an investor offer to pay $45K for a developer to build a general purpose stealth transfer utility. His proposal was to have it charge a fee for using that individual function and to share that fee with owners of the network (BitShareholders).
Others immediately started innovating, and there are now quite a few other ideas ranging from (a) automated crowd funding that funds a function and returns its profits to the crowdfunders, to (z) special purpose bonds to be sold by a developer that return a yield earned by the feature to the bond holders with interest.
You can see the whole discussion on these threads:
New Stealth Transfer WorkerThe General Theory of Privately Funded Blockchain FeaturesAnyhow, if you are a single developer or a small investor looking for byte-sized ways to do or fund a piece of work you think will earn you a long term revenue stream, the options available to just got more interesting.
Now you don't have to build and launch a whole new blockchain just to realize your vision of a single killer feature.
Develop your DAPP for one platform, then expand to others just like Adobe develops for Windows and MacOS. Or leave it to others to reap those revenue streams from other platforms, if you are more tribally inclined.
