I’m not ready to give up on @dirvine and the team yet in regards to PtD.
That being said, I’ve also been thinking of different business models if PtD doesn’t work and would like the community’s input. I’m thinking through different scenarios and trying to find a fair way to pay both the developers and the investors through a dividend style payment with the hub. If PtD doesn’t work then the new requirement would be that the hub makes a profit or produces something of value. Because the software is open source there is always the ability to fork it and lower the cost or remove the cost entirely.
The cost of using the app and ease of use needs to far outweigh the effort of spinning up another version of the app for those less technical folks. It will surely be possible and many who are technically inclined will do it.
There needs to be a real value proposition for people to pay to use the app (any app for that matter). One idea I can think of at this time is charge a minimal fee for hosting projects. I’m not happy with this. We eventually end up in a walled garden scenario and we can do better I think.
A better idea might be to offer free use of the hub tools and networking (people would pay for their own data) and the projects would give the hub (ie developers and investors) a small share in their own projects (might be possible through smart contracts). We become partners and we want their ultimate success, because their success is our success! Eventually we build quite a diverse portfolio of shares in many projects. Everyone helping everyone along the way…
Each of those apps that are built through the hub has to determine their own business model. Having a community to help determine that model is quite a valuable thing to have I think.