That's one way to do it....
You can install Raspbian Lite on a 2GB card. You won't have the GUI desktop, but you'll have a running system.
If you are using a Pi3B, you can put *everything* on a USB stick, HDD, or SSD. See here:
viewtopic.php?f=63&t=155167 for the beta test of this. If you go that route, you can boot your Pi without an SD card at all.
At present, I have 2 Pis that use external media full time. One boots from an SD card containing the usual /boot partition and has the root partition on a PiDrive (314GB HDD). The other is a CM with Raspbian Lite in the on-board eMMC flash (there isn't room for the full version of Raspbian). The CM only uses the /boot partition and has the root partition on an SSD. The CM is mounted in a WD SATA adapter carrier board. The former system (with the HDD) could be converted to boot-over-USB because it's a PI3B. The later system can't do that, as the CM uses a '2835 SoC, the same one that is on the Pi Zero, A+ and B+ Pis. I am looking forward to the release of the CM3, which will probably require an revised carrier board (if only for power reasons) but should be able to boot directly from the attached SSD with nothing in the eMMC flash. (I'm also hoping that the CM3 will have enough flash storage to hold a full Jessie release, but that is a different issue.)