Before I invest in any project I always look at the tokenization of the project before anything else. After the project most have sold their ideology to me, I move to understand their token economy to get how that could affect the price of a token. What a project is currently value doesn't usually matter when the token economy isn't friendly. Some project doesn't start with the full supply when listing and have a vetting schedule to introduce new coins into the circulating supply which would definitely drive down the price of the project.
Next I research on the team of the project, making sure this users have past experiences and not some young scammers wanting to defraud investors mostly the novices that are yet to understand how things actually work in the industry.