While I don't know about GIS specifically, I work in a similar field where the market leaders have an enormous feature set accumulated over many decades - some from the 1960's and never stopped growing. But I squeezed in with the main basic features first then as I got customers, added what they wanted and continually grew it. My advantages are price and ease of use. Users didn't need to go on a training course without all those features to learn. Many of the features of the big boys are so niche that most customers never need them, or are obsolete but retained for legacy, or are just not really essential.
Can I take a look at your product? I would be curious what a minimal ArcGIS would look like and how long it would take to build. GIS is super edge-casey, I think.
No sorry. I've created too embarrassing a trail of HN comments to want to link this identity to my livelihood. But it's not actually GIS, just a similar sort of product. It might be that an equally minimal GIS really too feature-poor to be any use at all.
