I sent my mom some bitcoin in early 2013, she enjoyed the run.

Now she asks me, "is Monero better than Bitcoin?"

I guess (official) GUI is quite triviality.
If I am not mistaken, there are some GUIs already so it is easy just nominate one of them to be GUI.
Also I enjoy Mymonero.com... It is most likely safer than a wallet in own computer since hard drives break sometimes.

Investors are needed for Monero.
I am convinced in the world exists money enough to buy up the Monero and rise the marketcap significiantly. The problem is to find those people.
A good way to make money is to try to find local rich people's contact details and start contacting them (not explaining things in technical jargon but in the language of average Joe), then find the right people and sell them coins with markup which is your salary.
You might get nice hourly wage in this way by the way. Just tell them you are not accepting less than 30 000 usd investments per person. 

This is kind of a morally depraved way of going out about this, just because it reeks of solicitation, an ugly situation to put someone in.

If and only if you are dealing exclusively with sophisticated investors then I don't see a problem with it.

Ever have a neighborhood kid come by and solicit you to buy shitty knives or chocolates of some company in the name of supporting whatever sympathizable cause? ...similar feeling, but good luck having the same appeal when you're some middle aged dude cold calling a stranger

And it's just an invasion of privacy unless these people are in some contact list they agree to be in for such solicitations.

Depends how you go about it. Good intentions pave the road to hell, is all. You can't guarantee Monero's outcome, or even someone's own outcome with Monero (e.g. lost wallet).
And this is if you're genuine about the technology and philosophy.

But if you're like TrueCryptonaire here, it sounds like he/she just wants sheep to fleece.

It takes BRASS BALLS to sell Monero!

I don't imagine an instant collapse. More likely is a slow slide to zero as it goes nowhere, largely due to market as opposed to technical factors. This could include failure to achieve critical mass at a time when the market perceives this to no longer be plausible, leading to a downward spiral of liquidity and capitalization.

There also could be some partial instant collapses, such as the release of a coin based on zerocash or a Bitcoin ring signature sidechain.

Possible reasons:

1. Bitcoin-style cryptocurrency not seen as useful (enough) by the market. Leads to same sort of downward liquidity spiral as above, but for the entire cryptocoin universe (except maybe other platform concepts such as Ripple, fiatcoin, etc.).

2. Private cryptocurrency is not seen as useful by the market. Ditto.

3. Bitcoin is perceived private enough or becomes more private (incl. sidechain)

4. Zerocoin is perceived as trusted enough (both in terms of setup and cryptographic maturity)

5. Dark/dash is perceived as private enough (and/or is improved). Requires Dark/dash to also not collapse into a financial smoldering wreckage, or other non-privacy-related failure.

6. An unknown black swan technology replaces Bitcoin, and is perceived as private enough or has a private version.

7. An unknown black swan technology replaces Monero's ring sigs, etc., and is perceived as private enough or has a private version. Monroe does not adopt/adapt, or fails to do so quickly enough.

I'm sure there are more.

But overall, I'm fairly convinced that failure to "take off" at some point will lead to the liquidity implosion into irrelevance (maybe not literally zero for very long time, but eventually that).