Yes but in that situation I'm no longer Leo DiCaprio, actor; I'm Appian Way Productions[0]. For me the missing piece (hence the question) is people doing that

Yes but in that situation I'm no longer Leo DiCaprio, actor; I'm Appian Way Productions[0]. For me the missing piece (hence the question) is people doing that sales/biz-dev work and taking their cut, on behalf of people who would prefer to be independent and just do the projects, not build a consulting company. Of course I'm assuming there are a lot of people like that, but as someone else commented, self-promotion skills and tech skills are not strongly correlated, might even be negatively correlated. I've hired contractors who would never ever be able to be anybody's boss anywhere, but they were really good programmers. Those people aren't going to get very far by making companies, but a good agent could probably get them a lot more money. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way_Productions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way_Productions