Not important to the conclusion or reasoning... but Stevena's post says:

  "the whole team working on Erlang quit and started their own company."

The same event as described in "A history of Erlang":

  "In December, most of the group that created Erlang resigned
  from Ericsson and started a new company called Bluetail AB."
  https://www.labouseur.com/courses/erlang/history-of-erlang-armstrong.pdf

'most of the group that _created_ Erlang' is not the same thing as 'the whole team _working_ on Erlang'. Or, quantifying it, at the end of the 'history' paper, there's a list of 45 people under 'implementation' and 'tools'. Around 35 were at Ericsson in 1998. Of those, nine or ten quit to form Bluetail, and another two or three left for Bluetail later on.

(In 1998, there were two connected groups working on Erlang in the same building in Älvsjö, Stockholm. One was the computer science laboratory (CSLAB), where Erlang was created, the other was "Open Systems", which had more of a development role. A significant part of CSLAB left. Almost all of 'Open Systems' stayed. Many that stayed were already doing a stellar job on Erlang and many still are.)