Does the amount of money raised in an ico determine the success of the project??
Is a necessity to do a fund raiser in order to start up a project??
Did satoshi nakamoto and vitalik also started a fund raised??
Not really, i have seen some success projects but they didn't raised too much funds, only about 1 million USD.
to starting a project, of course funds are needed to build it. But if you already have enough funds, it won't be necessary to raise more funds.
I think Ethereum was running ICO, selling their ETH at certain rate.
If the project didn't raised too much funds or at least reach the softcap then the project will be canceled and can't continue because the target of soft cap not reached and they don't have enough funds to continue the project. The team will return the funds back to the investor.