I like the list, but I wouldn't dismiss paid advertising so quickly. Set up a testing budget and keep testing until you make it work. Groupon, LivingSocial, etc are seeing tremendous growth from their AdWords campaigns.
Investors and potential acquirers are goig to be a lot more excited about a scalable user acquisition model like AdWords than fleeting success on social media.
It took me more than a year to figure out how to "crack the AdWords code", but I get an awful lot of users (and sales) attributable to AdWords. Until then, it was basically just "throw a dollar a day at it, see what works". (YMMV if you are in very rich verticals.)
Agree though I was writing the post more from the perspective of getting first 1,000 users. Focusing on adwords, facebook is good for going from first 1,000 users to first 100,000 users.
And, investors will definitely get excited if you figure it out.
I agree, modulo s/dedicated/tailored/. You can make your splash page work as a landing page, provided you craft the splash page side-by-side with your text ads.
Investors and potential acquirers are goig to be a lot more excited about a scalable user acquisition model like AdWords than fleeting success on social media.