My advice is to be careful where you put your money at.
It's like when you decide to buy shoes, do you like how they look? What they're made of?
Keep in mind that if their project looks so promising that it seems like it would never happen, it probably wouldn't.
The stages before investing should look something like this:
1. Get to know what they offer. Do you think that the project may have future? Are the people going to use it? Do they even need a blockchain?
2. Investigate the team and see if they already participated in different projects, do they have any history in this sphere?
3. See if their product is available for test. Go ahead and test it.
4. Read everything, collect as much information as possible. Whitepaper, Roadmap, Articles from trustworthy sources etc.
5. See if there are any holes in their project if you think that there are some you should trust your guts and stay away or see if they offer a solution.
6. Invest at your own risk and do not believe those Hype comments "This is the future of altcoins, the best project so far. To the moon and beyond..". Take your time and make your own research.
7. If you already decided that you like their project and want to invest, invest as much as you're willing to lose. This way you won't feel bad if the coin just couldn't make it.
Scam coins are all over the market now and you can't trust anything these days. I suggest you to stick with those who have been here for a while and have some awaiting projects. It's more secure that way at least for me.