An ICO is a fundraiser where people give you crypto tokens worth money to create a dAPP or smart contract. It is similar to Kickstarter.  

The smart contract can earn a profit and pass it through dividends for token holders or through increased valuation of the token. ICO really has nothing to do with companies or firms as legally registered entities but is ownership in a completely automated piece of software which exists distributed on a blockchain. So in the case of an ICO, ownership means control.

If you're asking about my opinions of real estate, I would say REITs are better for me because I like liquidity. I also see REITs as a lot less risk.  If you just want the dividends why do you care about control of the company? 

Owning the rights to the profit is the path to financial independence not owning control and voting power.

@telos 

The goal and intent behind my posts was to show that you can automate profit generation using "bots" which exist as smart contracts on Ethereum, or other future blockchains. That is the game, that is the ultimate productive asset, just so long as your bot is creating something of value which other humans are willing to pay for then it can make a profit for you indefinitely.

A bot would be a fully autonomous profit generating machine for whomever owns it or holds shares in it. This is different from a company, as a company exists legally while a bot exists digitally written in code, and interacts digitally, as humans must communicate with it using it's token only. In the case of Steem you need Steem, in the case of Ethereum you need ETH, in the case of Bitshares you need BTS, and so on. A token sale is a way to buy these currencies, but also act as a way to communicate such as to vote.

If Kaylin, or you, or I, can come together to get an idea for a smart contract funded, then we will be founders. We could reserve for ourselves some percentage of the token supply, and design the system to pay dividends to holders, as proof of stake. The ICO being a fundraising mechanism sells or pre-sells the tokens to others who want to buy their seats on the deck so they too can get whatever benefits.  Then all stakeholders work together to bring value and raise the price of their tokens.