When you are building for the web you make some browser backward-compatibility choices. Their implementation in that case which is build to be backward-compatible suffers significantly for being really slow.
I would not consider SVG as an option or necessary except if you are a building an well targetted network app served over the web.
Burning "money" is valid when you can't afford it. For a startup that "money" is the effort. So it's more important for a group of 2 or 3 to solve real problems.
YouOS, a team of smart guys got busted for getting caught in wrong execution.
