if I'm simple, if the project (the token) is already on the lit exchanger and the team ensures that the token will be there and get liquidity, that's the most logical thing to invest in. Instead of talking about the project, the future, the road map, blah blah blah, the point is that tokens on the exchanger are the main thing.
That is not even the end of it. There are a lot of coins that started brand new and they are on uniswap now, because it is such a simple thing, and also tron exchanges and bnb exchanges, they all have their own defis now and those tokens and coins get listed in those exchanges on first day, on their first ever existence, they are listed right away.
Why do we care about exchanges anymore? Because back in the day there were so many coins that we thought would worth something and ended up not really worthing anything at all because it wasn't listed anywhere important. I was part of a project like that once, I wasn't really too much involved, I just did their translations and that's it, but at the end of the day they weren't listed anywhere big and volume was under 300 dollars per day so it never took off.