On the last point, I think that's a risk, but the dead-end can still be big enough to make a small company quite wealthy. For example one of the more successful niche-tech companies in Denmark makes a portal that many Danish doctor's offices use. They did a good job really digging into how their market worked and what it wanted, so it's very customized to the way Danish healthcare works. Although it has some benefits for patients too (if a doctor uses this portal, patients can book appointments online, etc.), the real selling point has been that they identified what administrative work produces a lot of the per-office overhead at small offices, and offload much of that, so the doctor saves more in administrative salaries than they pay for the PaaS. They also have a fairly "high-touch" sales process to convince doctors that their product really will help them out. This company is probably not going to grow outside of Denmark, but it makes a lot of money in Denmark (comparatively speaking), and its market is so specialized that it's somewhat protected from external competitors.