Centralized Exchanges are the banks of the crypto world, if you let them become that. In my mind, if you build a great coin with great features (think of something like XMR), then you're going to get the exchanges to accept you without having to dump tons of money on exchange fees. This is the thought process of 'if you build it, they'll come'
But that is not what is happening, sadly. You can have the best coin in the world, but they won't list it unless a) you pay them money or b) you have proved there is so much volume on a Dex, that they list it anyway to get a cut of the fees on the trading volume.
In order for b) to happen, you need a huge community. It's hard to build a community in the cryotocurrency world because there is no central place any longer where you can gain followers. It used to be this forum, but it's now fragmented into several subreddits, twitter, facebook and elsewhere.