I believe José deserves a lot of credit. For example, the Elixir Conference looks well-produced. No doubt there is a large team behind that, but it is obvious h

I believe José deserves a lot of credit. For example, the Elixir Conference looks well-produced. No doubt there is a large team behind that, but it is obvious his influence guides that process. I'm particularly thinking of the LiveNative talk where the founder of the company talks about his own vision for extending LiveView to mobile and desktop. He mentions several times when José has interacted with him to help guide the project to stay inline with Elixir's overall goals. Of course, there is also the hints of frustration of a commercial business having to wait for community consensus. But that kind of direct involvement in the community is extremely encouraging. You also make a very good point about the risk and reward metric. One of the reasons I have been focusing on Elixir as opposed to other niche languages is the progress the community is making is inspiring. I recall an essay by Paul Graham where he talks about Lisp being a contributor to his success with the startup that made him wealthy. He believed that being faster to market with features due to his platform choice was decisive in that success. In that way, something like Elixir (and really, the BEAM) could be a decisive component to some startups success. Given that they are focusing on important contemporary ideas, that is possible. LiveBook for example and Nx/Axon/etc for ML may actually be a killer feature. Of course, time will tell. I don't have a crystal ball. But I am very interested in watching it all unfold.