Thank you for your kind words. It's nerve wracking when you finally pull the trigger and say "we need to get this out there".

Re: Pony vs Erlang.

Point 1: we love erlang.

There's a short version of the answer to your question starting around minute 49 of my QCon NY talk: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/pony-wallaroo

And yes, I am planning on writing more about why we went with Pony (which led to my becoming a member of the Pony core team).