First you need to understand that most of this "savant developer" stuff is entertainment. If you would only purchase the tokens of a project because you see a quirky pre-diagnosed aspergers dev on twitter and telegram at all hours of the day, then thats the way organizations are going to continue to market.
Most of the projects are not that complicated and do not require specific expertise. And even the "brand new blockchains!" are not that complicated, despite being put on a pedestal as the highest order of complexity in the crypto space, we are talking about linked lists that a freshman in college all get exposed to.
Secondly it is completely fine and normal to just outsource the development to contracting firms. Because these are normal businesses booking revenue after they create and sell digital assets and just hiring a few developers to do it.
I don't find that controversial and its completely normal to any other software development cycle, although I would like the speculators to understand that more in their decision making process. What's not normal is daytraders pretending to be angel investors.
To answer your question, I would say the only thing to look for is token distribution schedule and if there are ways to alter that such as minting tokens without any input from the community, or if the treasury tokens are locked in a smart contract or not.
Regarding the actual product you are still always taking them by their word.
I would argue taking a less passive approach and trying to help the development effort, or being in a position to! You might actually land the development contract, which can be more lucrative than speculating to begin with.