many "smaller proposals" from different people may deserve support as well
I agree to a certain extent. Things such as @inertia's $3 a day banjo proposal aren't necessary for any of those goals above, but the funding is pretty insignificant for what we're getting. However, in a perfect world, we would build our base up as much as possible, and then use that as a foundation to empower all sorts of projects, services, dapps, and whatever creative things people come up with to help the platform.
I think a lot of people don't realize that we will need to support quite a few failures before we get something that really succeeds. Once we're at a certain point, we'll be poised to support many of these projects, but IMO I don't think we're at that point yet.
I am fully with you on this one :)