Sometime its good for investing and sometime not.
when it's a good ico, absolutely profitable for investor and developer.
The advantage for investors who invested on ICO before the coin is launched to the free market is the price given will be cheaper. And usually when the coin is launched the price will jump up to more than 5x the price of ICO. This is what makes investors enjoy this ICO.
For the developers they will get financial assistance to accelerate their projects that they develop, so that can be enjoyed by many people.
Behind the profits there must be disadvantages that will come. Because ICO is investing in nature then we spend money and give to third parties and the money may not be used according to the agreement when ICO is carried away without any explanation that is clear or more familiar with SCAM.
Several things become the problem of SCAM when the ICO is not clear project, the purpose of collecting funds made by developers and teams that are not clear or not plastered. Usually this will be explained in the whitepaper.