Stripe is 12 years old, has ~4,000 employees, and does several billion in revenue each year. It’s not a startup anymore. Although I do agree with your general sentiment that if you want real work-life balance, an actual startup is probably not for you.
I disagree with both of your statements. Hypergrowth is a meaningless term and a startup is a type of company in a specific stage of its lifecycle. Running a company "like a startup" can be a thing, but that does not make the company a startup.
Based on my experience at Amazon, I believe this is something you hear at megacorps that are in denial about their current operating procedures and also don't understand how a startup operates.
