You need to reasearch about the coin you wanna invest.. some coins are pure... shit and some other have the potencial to be something special.. but this is no reason to be fool when you are investing your money you still can lose because the people maybe don't see the same potencial.
You are right the right way to know about any coin is to know is to know the history of developers and those coins which will have hidden developers will have some problem in the future and those developers will not have any fear if any problem occurred to the coin.
You can only buy a coin if it has good developers and good community support. Otherwise, you will lose money.