2. and the most reasonable thing is, they have not reached hardcap yet, so they try to find new investors who are interested or cooperate with other projects until the hardcap that they want is achieved
the project example is : swissalpsmining and thinkcoin
what do you thing?
This may be a closer-to-reality reason but I don't think it's the best way to do in a project. Even the "private sale" concept is not so good to me, much more when it is being done after ICO. If they are not able to reach the hardcap, then maybe, they just have to extend the ICO.