In your opinion, is it important that new tokens go directly to large markets such as hitbtc, hotbit, etc.?
Well I think it is best for a token to be listed on popular exchanges because of volumes and numbers of users they have, imagine listing your coin on binance and carrying out a trading competition, that way binance would advertise you coin themselves and everyone in their community will see it, meaning that you don't really need to run ad in order to get people that would trade your coin, all you need do is list this tokens on popular exchanges that have made name for themselves already.
You are totally right, but what of the listing cost, some projects cannot really afford the amount these big exchanges do quote for a startup projects, that is why they end up wasting the money they generate through the crowd funding and never recover it back.
It will still not be a very bad idea for them to register on exchanges that has quality features, these big exchanges all started from the grassroots too, it is left for the project developer to do a thorough marketing that will make their interested users use the exchange they are listed on to make trade and exchanges of their coin.