When the machine appeared there was nothing like it. Later machines were more robust and also smaller using microprocessors, downto Lisp Machines on Nubus cards for Macs.
> a small company
At max they had 1000 employees.
> And, originally, 45-minute garbage collections
Then they invented and commercialized better GCs.
I'm beginning to find that small companies have more arrogance than larger. Just, confirmation bias seems to get people to remember the ones with the skills to back it up. Most companies fail without you ever hearing of them.
What really killed them was decent LISP compilers for mainstream CPUs. LISP doesn't really need special hardware with tag bits.