I think you're overlooking a huge difference in your argument against "the myth of the founder-hero": Lyft benefited tremendously from Uber pushing into new markets / cities first. Uber and tk had a huge impact on making ride share legal, and Lyft never had to deal with that (or not nearly as much).

Also, how would Lyft ever buy Uber? Even if Uber and Lyft get 50/50 market share, which I think is impossible, you need to be way larger to buy out another company.

In the tech industry, the pioneers are usually the ones with arrows in their backs.

You are absolutely right that the TK/Uber combo going head-on against existing laws is what made ride hailing a reality for millions of consumers, but unless the pioneer has an air tight go-to market strategy to create and maintain dominance of the market, historically, the odds tilt strongly in favor of the second mover, third mover, nth mover (i.e. fast followers) achieving market dominance.

Facebook, the market leader was launched in 2004, MySpace in 2003 and there was Friendster in 2002 founded by Jonathan Abrams.

Zuckerberg learnt how not to run a social network from watching the mistakes of Friendster and MySpace before him.

This. Kalanick is as much Lyft's founder as Uber's founder. Without Kalanick, Lyft would be a tiny fraction of its current size and available only in a few markets.