Most very large ICO's are really private offerings these days which I have mixed views about.

Essentially a public ICO is a traditional ICO open to the public. Some allow anyone to invest while others will require investors to carry out some kind of AML/KYC check, perhaps going as far as the offering providing a full prospectus much like an IPO. The trouble is regulators are really starting to clamp down and no one wants to end up wearing an orange jump suit and so the "better" ICO's as in the largest and most planned out ICO's are increasingly going to private offerings.

These private offerings are typically managed by ICO advisory firms who have a book of investors looking to invest in ICO's. An ICO therefore goes to those private investors who will invest significant sums. This is great for those investors who get a bargain price token and its great for the blockchain business because the tokens are bought by professional investors who have gone through a thorough KYC and AML process. The advice these days is to make your token a utility token but treat it like a security. In other words make is sit as far away from the legal fence as possible but put all the belt and braces in place so that if regulators decide it's a security then you're covered.

Also these private placements now typically want equity as well as tokens which resolves the conflict of interest that comes from businesses with shares raising money for tokens. This is a hot legal topic that's only going to get hotter.

And so yes, it's very possible to raise VC capital. If your team and project is strong then you can raise seed funding and then A round and continue on without ever having to run an ICO and if at some point you do run an ICO then seriously consider running it as a private placement through an ICO advisory firm to cover yourself legally.

My main complaint with this is that it can cause liquidity problems in your market. If you run a major ICO and the token holders are a small number of large investors then how does the market get sufficient liquidity to function? I think the best approach was the Bitcoin approach. Organic growth with no hyped up ICO, invented token ICO price while still building a large and strong economy.