I dunno, in the case of my idea, I thought of something that I wanted, and then through a long series of epiphanies spread over a year or two (maybe three?), I realized I could actually do it.

However, I think that there definitely is a kernel of truth in these founder stories even in their distilled version. While the epiphany is momentary and only signifies the start of the quest, it is a key inspirational moment that makes you feel you can do it. Maybe it's not as dramatic as, for a cute example, Neo taking the red pill, but it does have some of the same significance in that it can radically change your life path.

While the marketspeak of some of these stories is just blowing their own horn while saying something obvious, once you have your initial idea, at least to me, it seems almost brain dead. You can always distill the specifics of your idea down to something truly simple. There's a saying in mathematics that everything in math is obvious, except that no one thought of it until now. It's the same principle at work.