Experience with equity sharing for talent?

I read an article in Bloomberg Businessweek about investment firms that send/provide engineers and talent instead of cash in exchange for equity. I've never thought of or heard of this concept before, but I'm very interested.

My husband and I run a small javascript/node/realtime consulting firm, but we are also bootstrapping a testing product that has great potential. Obviously cash would be nice, but what we really need is a dedicated team working on it.

Does anyone have experience with these types of investment firms, like Equitive? Was it worth it to you? What was the process like for getting their attention and negotiating a fair deal?