While up to the community, I would see four near-term purposes for the donations pool described in my prior post:

1) Helping ensure an orchestrated mainnet launch

2) Then helping get Elastic listed on exchanges, paying exchange fees

3) Funding a contest, like the contest proposed by Ttookk

4) Fueling other marketing efforts, such as semi-paid volunteers systematically contacting university after university, an idea related to what someone else proposed a while back

Manage #1 through #4 well, and this could take off greatly and fast, leading to more coders and technically skilled volunteers arriving, along with general community expansion.  (EK said he might pay one exchange fee himself, but, as generous as he has been, the proposed donations pool would actually aid decentralization by making such funding not dependent on a single person -- and, besides, EK presumably couldn't pay everything else by himself, not that he should have to do so).