Many of the ICO's are scams or dreams with unrealistic goals which would lead to failure but there is lots of money to be made if you do your research.
Things to look at:
1. is it an existing business with existing revenue stream or does the company only have ideas?
Remember majority of this companies without an existing business fail or just run with your money.
For Example, if a company already has contracts and/or physcial assets, and/or a revenue stream from existing projects than this is a good sign that they are looking to expand and not run with your money.
2. Business or project feasibility: Look deeply into what they are trying to achieve and make the decision if this ICO is feasible in terms of business feasibility.
For example, if the company sells coffee and its goal of the ICO is to raise funds to expand out to build more coffee shops than the likelihood of success if high, but if a company is trying to cure cancer
the likelihood is very small because people have been trying for decades but we aren't any closer to finding a cure yet.
3. Team:
Is the team capable people who can be vetted to be experts in their industry.
For example, a John Doe can say he is an expert in blockchain technology but there has to be a channel that we can see if this is real because I'm not going to trust his word and his world only.
Internet checks are a good way to check (look for articles and other industry related papers that they worked on)
***Things to STAY AWAY FROM***
1. How great the webpage looks like:
Many ICO's spend all their resources in the webpage but little or no money in the actual product
2. Wording:
Stay away from ICO investment that uses the word "will" instead of "has"
There are a few ICO's right now who have a finished product with stable revenue pipeline
Lamp Education:
http://www.lampeducation.ca/app/docs2/documents/LampWhitePaper.pdfPikciochain:
https://pikciochain.com/media/dynamic_preferences/whitepaper__whitepaper_en/Ten8%20-%20PikcioChain%20Whitepaper%20English.pdf