My guess is that it's much more likely that because picking winning founders is so difficult (and so little real data is available) that they're likely to acqui

My guess is that it's much more likely that because picking winning founders is so difficult (and so little real data is available) that they're likely to acquire all sorts of superstitions about what a good founder is supposed to look like. People who play the slot machines or invest in the stock market are notoriously superstitious. I don't think VCs are much different. I don't think VCs accurately keep track of which founders they reject and end up successful anyway, and adjust their metrics based on that data. I think they have hunches and some founders become successful and then they filter more aggressively on those character traits and confirmation bias takes care of the rest.