In his book "An Altcoin Trader's Handbook" Nick Patel advises to check:
1.Coins: the intrinsic properties of coin, such as its block reward, coin supply, premine etc.
2.Exchanges: which, volume etc.
3.Block explorers and rich-lists: you will dig into how to spot accumulation and smart-money.
4.Community: social media presence, marketing, responsiveness and approability, etc
5.Development: whitepapers, roadmap, websites, wallets, github etc.
For him it is the five pilliars of fundamental analys.
I would definitely agree with these five must-have requirements. Familiarize yourself with what a reputable whitepaper looks like, for instance, has it been plagiarized, how fastidious is the attention to detail, are there spelling or grammatical errors? These small clues provide a lot of insight into the type of company they may be. Also thoroughly research developers' backgrounds-is there substance and depth to their resumes or is there an opportunistic chance for a scam artist? Be really careful with new ICO's as the blockchain road has been littered with investors being scammed of their cash.