ICOs are in many ways similar to startups. No doubt it is risky.
Even the famous ones makes mistakes - like Dropbox buying
$100,000 chrome panda
Always do your due diligence (checking team members, WP, etc...) and business model - I see many ICOs claiming that middle man must die, but many time it is just non-sense and their business model wont work. (see
this Vitalik's tweet)