The Model 01 improves upon its inspiration, the Esrille, but has wobbly, non-standard switches and the keycaps feel cheap. The open source community built up around the hardware is the real asset.
Note: there have been several loosely similar keyboards. Both the Esrille folks and the keyboardio folks were inspired by some of the same sources, such as the English Maltron from the 1970s and the Japanese TRON project from the late 80s–early 90s. e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/TRON-Key...
(And of course both are directed by human hand anatomy.)
But it is not accurate to claim that the Esrille was a primary inspiration for keyboardio.
> non-standard switches
There is no “standard” type of keyswitches.
Matias keyswitches are fantastic, I've never heard of anyone calling them "non-standard" or "cheap". They are a recreation of the classic ALPS keyswitches used in early Apple and IBM keyboards.
I have one of each, but I generally prefer the quiet ones.
I used the Matias Ergo Pro with the Quiet Click switches pretty much exclusively before I got my Model 01, so I was already very used to that style of switch when I first got the board.