I agree most successful ICOs have a large number investors, the exception of course is the super successful ones like BAT which sold out in 30 seconds from huge investors.

Do you have any idea of an easy way to tell how many people invested in an ICO? The only way I know of is counting the initial transfers of the tokens on the blockchain :/ 

Ya I agree with you, tokens can be successful with similar concepts. Its like saying just because Mcdonalds already exists, burger king won't be successful.

So if you have two projects, which would you consider more successful??

Project  A).
ICO price, = $1.00
Total raised = $1million
Exchange listed and tokens trade at ~$5 for 6 months
Then the project fails and dies, tokens become worthless

Project B)
ICO price = $1.00
Total raised = $1million
Exchange listed and tokens trade at ~$1 forever,
The project launches and becomes extremely well adopted.

Tannerchum, I totally agree with you. The amount of investors is probably the single best determinant for long-term success of a project. If there are 100,000 investors each willing to give $10 for access to the eventual product, I think its for more likely to succeed than 10 investors who each invested $100,000 only to later try to sell their tokens at a higher price.

It would be great to see more projects implement a "maximum" amount per investor.

Its a risk both ways, in the ICO you could get cheaper but research shows probably on 50% of ICOs ever make it to the market so right away you're safer waiting to see if it even makes it to the market.

If you're going to buy in the ICO, i'd read through this research first. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3163849 "Are Blockchain Crowdsales the New 'Gold Rush'? Success Determinants of Initial Coin Offerings"

What do you think is a better definition of success in an ICO? The amount it raises or whether the token is ultimately listed on an exchange?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3163849 "Are Blockchain Crowdsales the New 'Gold Rush'? Success Determinants of Initial Coin Offerings"

This paper argues eventual trading status is more important.