Shamelessly stolen from another thread, I thought that it would be awesome to let the "founders" themselves answer the ICO questions posed by the community.
Here is the incomplete list of good questions from Danna_R:

So ICO founders!! FIRE AWAY!

1. Are they real? - LinkedIn, etc.

2. Independent verification - award-shows etc. Don't matter if they actually win anything. Just that they are outthere.

3. Business model - can it live outside of crypto (CRUCIAL!)

4. Are they "chaaanging the world" - then you are out. get out. I want ICOs that actually happen. Not elephants in space.

5. Does the token model insure that I will make money? Preferably by incorporating burning in the service layers.

6. How is the ICO using blockchain? First. Educate yourself on how the blockchain works, and the current limitations! Often ICOs want to use the Blockchain for an insane amount of transactions. Or put things on the Blockchain which really should not go there.. However it sounds "cool" and "crypto" friendly.

7. I disagree about the apparent consensus that an ICO project should use the Blockchain for something crucial. That seems to be a rule made by crypto-evangelists, not business oriented people.

8. Check if the project is backed by VC. Check if the VCs have legitimate business outside the ICO industry.

9. Don't use xxx amount of social views, xxx amount of Telegram users etc. For anything. ALL the teams hire external marketing. Some of the agencies, if not all,  tampers alot with the numbers, to sell the hype that they promised the ICOs. Don't necessarily let weird numbers weigh much in your decision.

10. Hype is cool. But a good business model, and an idea that can survive outside of crypto because it was born outside crypto, is preferable.