Actually the ICO market is very similar to the early equity investment in tech startups – it was much easier to get investment and at very favorable terms when it was starting out. Because the ICO industry in the beginning was very explosive and lots of projects got funded easily, many new projects didn’t have a very good value proposition or even a traditional set of investment criteria, e.g. solid team, unique technology or product, concrete business plan, early clients/community, etc. In the beginning and in the midst of the hype projects were getting funded on the basis of vision alone, so when the industry cooled off, more experienced and seasoned investors entered the market, it became much harder to get funding.
The reasons behind failure of some ICOs that looked very promising on paper range from the inability to deliver on promises to bad timing, such as crowdsale during the market cooldown period.