You could say the same about any business owner if you said thousands of paid employees built their business. Almost nobody builds something that lasts by themselves.
I don't think that's the same. A business needs a lot of coordination that is not (currently) possible with a crowdsourcing approach and people work for money. Founders of a crowdsourcing endeavor have its merits but at the end is the community working hard (many times harder than in a business) who owe the praise.