Don't accept sub-market pay and long hours in exchange for 'experience'. Other people (i.e. investors) are making money off your work. Get paid.
I did a lot better at the two startups that I worked at than the either the founders or investors did. At least I got paid; it may've been below market, but I ended up with net-positive income from them.
Probably the most valuable experience you can get out of a startup is learning that most things fail, and when they fail, they take everybody involved with them, and it's your responsibility to dig yourself out and either make them succeed or find something else that will. Only then can you make informed decisions about your career. A lot of people who join the secure, steady thing never learn this, and then they're completely blindsided when it fails too.
Where's this meme that Google just hires everybody who wants to work there coming from? Google has known-broken interviewing processes for hiring capable people (he says, bitterly, after never having had passed a phone screen with them).
Are you assuming there's no pay involved? I didn't get that from the article; it's not saying take a job for no pay. It's saying it's unreasonable to expect to get paid Google money at a startup.
In exchange for not getting paid what you're worth to Google, you get to touch a lot of different areas and get a lot of experience with a lot of things.
I chose to work at a startup after working for an established company full of very smart engineers from whom I learned tons about software development and how to operate. I left because after a number of years I felt the need to work on something new and really apply what I had learned, not just about code but building the tech-side of the company. Having a blank slate allowed me to improve in areas I thought could be done better, it showed me the short comings in other approaches. Ultimately it's been an incredible learning experience that you just can't replicate in a lot of ways. I also have entrepreneurial ambitions so joining a startup as employee #1 has allowed me to learn how to build a business at every level. Again, very valuable information that you just won't get from BigCo, MedCo, and probably not even SmallCo. I can't pay to get this knowledge, I simply can't so how do you value this? Luckily for me this is more of a thought exercise as wages in my area are somewhat depressed so a startup can offer a competitive salary.
However I have also seen a handful of graduates who got into software purely as a financial motivation, and dream of winning the startup lottery. They turn down a better job, be it salary, benefits, or a place with great learning potential for a few more options. These are the exploited, the naive.
If you are philosophically averse to this, your options seem pretty limited to me.
If you join a startup, it might be investors, as you point out. If you join a big company, it will be that company's shareholders. If you start your own company, it might be your own investors, or if you have none, the government taxing your corporate profits. Also better not start any company doing things like productivity tools, raw materials, etc. Your customers might make money off your work that way...