[ghayes]

Couldn't the founder story still be true, but simply incomplete? E.g. Jack Dorsey may have been frustrated that a company didn't accept credit cards, but also, he was already a successful entrepreneur and may have spent months or years researching the problem before starting Square?

[CydeWeys]

A lot of these founder stories boil down to coming up with a good idea and then building it. You hear more about the stories where that worked out and less about the stories where it didn't. Plus the ideas and execution quality all vary, along with market timing.

It's hard to say what exactly can be learned from such stories.