Interesting question , I was offered something similar a few months back when a domain stock market was proposed. Personally I thought the idea had too many core holes to make it fly so was out.
It may be better to have 50% of something than 100% of nothing, but certainly better to have 1% of something for sure
Taking it to the domain names element, it depends on the quality of domains. Often domains have value to an end user that cannot be enhanced eg. Acorn.com would not increase its worth to Admin if it had a great info site about trees / nuts etc thus development can be a negative step.
Personally I see development skills as a comodity so I would favour the organic route to growth over splitting off %ages.