I'm a Newbie.Please Brief What do you meant by ICO.
ICO stands for Initial Coin offering. It's basically a way to 'invest' into a new coin/project. People pay money through btc/eth/etc to a group/business and give you a share of the coins/new tech they will develop. Similar to an IPO where you buy shares of a company.
You said it right, but the IPO is a process where there is a guarantee for investors that are created by market regulators, but in the case of ICO, there are no regulators except this new integration with KYC, but there are no guarantees that the project will not work, so these are different processes.