The difference seems to be that rather than using third-party escrow, his idea uses code running on the Ethereum network to allow investors to vote on the relea

The difference seems to be that rather than using third-party escrow, his idea uses code running on the Ethereum network to allow investors to vote on the release of funds (because we know that complex smart contract code of this kind worked perfectly in the past and certainly didn't have bugs so severe the entire Ethereum protocol was forked to undo them).