You're right in a narrow sense but wrong in a broad one.
"It’s always more work to work with a company to get the last mile of the custom use case… than it would have been to just do it yourself."
This is true if all you need is a out of the box basemap with "data layers"
Many companies need to process data in real time or at least nightly to get it into a format that has all the information they need usually cross referenced and enhanced with multiple related data sources. These can be related via a primary key and simple or related via a simple or complex spatial relationship or spatial plus primary key relationships. This will require custom ETL pipelines that a utility company, for instance, doesn't have the in house expertise to create and maintain.
This also assumes you have the supporting elements already in place. Utilities often need to host data themselves for security or legacy reasons so they can't just use a cloud service. There are usually tools built on top of the data that need to be updated. A new geospatial system usually involves a lot more than just a new data layer. If that's all you need, then maybe these companies like felt are a good solution.
These are all interesting and well informed comments but am I wrong in thinking they seem to be unrelated to the Felt product?
Felt seems to be primarily a visual map annotation tool ala building visualizations. I doubt the data part would need to be that complex and custom. It could be a generic 'view' layer providing just the top layer and leave the data sources wide open and flexible but for the current offering it makes sense it's building off a 'library' of sources.
Although every B2B product will have customers who demand startups be their personal software consultants. That doesn't always translate into a repeatable product.
"It’s always more work to work with a company to get the last mile of the custom use case… than it would have been to just do it yourself."
This is true if all you need is a out of the box basemap with "data layers"
Many companies need to process data in real time or at least nightly to get it into a format that has all the information they need usually cross referenced and enhanced with multiple related data sources. These can be related via a primary key and simple or related via a simple or complex spatial relationship or spatial plus primary key relationships. This will require custom ETL pipelines that a utility company, for instance, doesn't have the in house expertise to create and maintain.
This also assumes you have the supporting elements already in place. Utilities often need to host data themselves for security or legacy reasons so they can't just use a cloud service. There are usually tools built on top of the data that need to be updated. A new geospatial system usually involves a lot more than just a new data layer. If that's all you need, then maybe these companies like felt are a good solution.