The difference in this case is that there is a lot more fluidity in terms of who can benefit from and participate in the project's growth. Also, claims of ownership are backed by a cryptographically-secure financial instrument instead of promises and paper contracts. We know what happens to employees who work for options contracts - In our case, at least their earnings are not going to 'expire worthless'. All directors hold the same type of tokens as employees so there is a shared incentive.
This week we had hundreds of people coming out of nowhere and offering to help us with our marketing in return for a small amount of token.
Seeing this, I have no doubt that cryptocurrency will be the future of startup financing.
You'll need "contributors" with plenty of fiat money then (or real jobs on the side), unless their land lord and grocery store etc take your token as payment.
Also, in our case, the token is more like a share of the company than a currency. Just because you can't use Google shares to pay for groceries doesn't mean that they don't have value. We have a plan in place to continuously buy tokens back on the market using the future profits we make.
You don't need fiat money to run a company anymore. You can make your own cryptocurrency and it works as both money and company shares. I was quite surprised initially by how willing people were to accept it as payment for their work but now it seems totally normal.