I'm sorry to hear about your loss OP. It's really hard nowadays to pick the right new project to invest in. It's safer to invest in a more established altcoin or even bitcoin itself.
On the other hand i was pretty lucky with the last few presales i joined via an investment pool. Most of them performed pretty well so you can't say in general that investing in new projects is always bad.. you just need to be lucky or part of the right groups.