ICOs and reflections of a dot.com boom/bust survivor 20 years later

In 1998, I was a broke post-graduate student living in a small apartment in Boulder, CO with my pregnant wife and 6-year-old son. I convinced my wife to let me take our approximately $1,000 tax refund and invest it "online" (which was still somewhat of a novelty in 1998) in stocks on E-Trade.com. I told her that there were these things called "IPOs" that people could purchase and then flip for a quick profit. She was dubious, but I persisted and finally opened my account at E-Trade. The years 1998 - 2001 were good ones, and I made over $60,000 profit from that initial $1,000. Then the dot.com crash came. One of the problems with the dot.com boom was that you had companies with little more than an idea receiving millions of dollars in startup funds (sound familiar?). One of the final straws that broke the back of the dot.com IPO boom was Pets.com, whose stock went from an IPO price of $14/share down to $0.22/share and lasted less than one year (ref: http://money.howstuffworks.com/10-biggest-ipo-flops4.htm). What does this long, rambling story have to do with today? Well...let's just say that the proliferation of ICOs (many with little more than a fancy website and a whitepaper full of cool sounding gibberish) reminds me strongly of those IPO days 20 years ago. The market is becoming saturated with similar-sounding and similar-looking groups trying to pry your hard-earned BTC, LTC, ETH, or USDT out of you. I will be the first to admit that I have been investing in some ICOs over the past few months, but only after careful research and risk analysis. I urge you to do the same before investing in any ICO. Some important questions to ask are: 1) Are they providing a service that is needed and is not already being successfully provided by another, established company? 2) Do the people listed have experience in the field they are going into? 3) Is there a roadmap provided (there should be) and does it make sense to you, not just look good on the screen? 4) How many tokens will be sold and what is the burn rate at the conclusion of the ICO? 5) Is this something you feel comfortable potentially losing money on? 6) Do you plan to HODL or FLIP? Make your plans and buy/trade accordingly. Good Luck and don't be a bagholder for the next Pets.com.