ROI for startups? Lol. If you would see most of the scaled startups around 80% of them are unprofitable even at the EBITDA level which is Earnings before Interest Depreciation & Amortization. This means they are running on zero ROI in fact most of them are just burning cash. Startups these days are more about increasing your revenues even if that comes at a huge acquisition cost, also some startups don't even work for revenue, they are running and scaling due to their increasing consumer base, so I don't think you should worry a lot about ROI in the initial stages of a startup, Focus on improving customer acquisition, retention & satisfaction and just try to avoid cash-burning, try liquidating your equity a bit by finding investors because that would be the only quick way to scale up your business.
I appreciate @teosanru for stretching the details. Now I understand what OP means.
Most of them fail as I read thru different examples of it.
Is it that much different with an ICO? Because as I understand it, it's a startup for developing a product which they think will be in demand in the long run. (scalable startups) It's high risk, if I am not mistaken.
TikTok is a good example, right? It boomed because of the unique way of sharing videos or whatever the kids are doing now.
So ROI, can it really be calculated if that is the industry of the startup?