The most fantastic thing about this post is you have basically written exactly what is rattling around in my own head - only I would never have been able to convert it to text in such an eloquent way.
I am constantly told, and do believe it is true that more investors need bringing in to push the platform forward. But I feel that what will achieve that is development of communities and the real active people on this platform showing what it is capable of - as a social network a hub for communities and a true way for people from around the world to interact with each other and share knowledge and interests.
My own input is interaction, trying to encourage and retain people by sharing their work and and giving it appreciation through comments. There are so many communities growing and expanding now and I'm very interested to see what Hivemind will bring as well - certainly I think we have a lot to look forward to.
Thank you for kind feedback! I think it's great that we have multiple people chasing different paths for spreading the good word about Steem, so I'm definitely excited about what's to come. Hivemind is going to be fun to experiment too, I expect this to enable a whole new class of front ends (and steemit.com is included in being able to add in so many different features). Excited!