A long time ago a small startup used unusual tooling in the industry. The startup was small, but the tooling had some great qualities, which allowed the startup

A long time ago a small startup used unusual tooling in the industry. The startup was small, but the tooling had some great qualities, which allowed the startup to compete with bigger teams feature for feature, spending less efforts to produce the same functionality as their industry peers. Eventually the startup had a successful exit, the founders become rich, and one of them even started sharing his experience in a rather systematic manner. Happy end. Is it so that SVG requires to use all the features of it, or is it possible that you can mix and match, choosing what's important now and what's not, while benefiting from already existing SVG features? Is it possible that SVG followers don't do something which SVG does for them? Aren't there features, sufficiently aligned with SVG, which outperform directly working with other layers?