Have you heard of Just-Dice.com (the dice site which had over 60,000 bitcoins invested) yeh? Well the guy with the puppet avatar, dooglus, controlled the site. Trustworthy? I think so.
I've know douglus ran Just-dice. It was a great site and I played there personally myself. I also think highly of dooglus. My decision still stands though. Did dooglus trust the 60,000 BTC with another forum member? I am not personally comfortable putting $270,000 worth of BTC with another member. It might help boost our reputation, but it would greatly lower our security, and that's what we plan on keeping to the absolute highest standards above anything else.
If anyone believes that it is a shady decision to not hold the coins of our own users, then once again please do not invest.
I find it laughable that your reasoning behind not doing a multi-sig cold wallet with dooglus is 'it would greatly lower our security'. That is one of the most mind-boggling excuses I have ever heard, and I cannot believe no one called you out on it. You don't think there are preventative measures put in place in the event Dooglus dies tomorrow and has control of the private keys? Of course there are. Dooglus is, and will forever be, the most trusted member on bitcointalk because he ran a dice site flawlessly, and the day he shut down returned 100% of the funds. Any new sites to the bitcoin gambling investment market should have a multisig REQUIREMENT before people trust a single cent to anybody. Sorry, but you don't get the benefit of the doubt, and to say it greatly lowers your security to do so is either incredibly naive or shows intent to eventually run off with funds. Maybe you are trustworthy now, but who's to say the temptation to eventually run off with funds when you reach 5,000 or 10,000 bitcoin won't be too much to ignore?
Is the decision to hold onto your cold wallet funds with no multi-sig, and slowly build your reputation over time with the community, an acceptable stance to take? Yes, absolutely. But that SHOULD result in you getting zero investors. Of course, there will always be the suckers who never learn from history and will invest anyways.
At the very least, detailed personal information of the site owners should be held in escrow by a highly trusted member of the community. That would be a start, but for me or anyone else in the community with half a brain to EVER invest in another bitcoin gambling site, you need to have a multisig cold wallet partly controlled by dooglus. If you intend to run an honest site, there is not a valid excuse not to do it. The rules have changed in this market, and failure for new operators to follow them should result in people staying away from your site like the plague.
Best of luck, and I hope for the community's sake you change your mind.