In my experience, tactics you mentioned are much easier said than done. You mention launching city by city - what I would suggest is focusing on how exactly you are going to launch in ONE city (the first one). I don't know your financial situation, but I think you are underestimating the costs of organizing even small-scale promotional activities and perhaps overestimating reach of you as an individual and/or willingness of others to share/help (if you have a development team, I can tell you they are mostly not prone of "leaving the building").

See my other comment how to gauge if user interest in interviews is real or hypothetical. Hope this helps!