Does the amount of money raised in an ico determine the success of the project??
Absolutely
NOT, the fund raised during ICO is small part to judge the project is success or not,
THE MAIN KEY is what the project do after ICO phase (at least they
MUST follow the Roadmap that they created before)
Is a necessity to do a fund raiser in order to start up a project??
Not always, I know some project not doing ICO or fund raising phase.
Did satoshi nakamoto and vitalik also started a fund raised??
BTC (Satoshi Nakamoto): Absolutely NOT
ETH (Vitalik): Yes, he (they) did