I assume things are similar in other large tech companies.
I'll posit that the real problem with big companies is the opposite: the price of failure is mild (you get reassigned to another team and get to do more cool stuff) and the benefits of success are also mild (you might get a promotion and an iPad or something). When your actions have little effect on the outcome, your actions tend to regress to the mean. In a startup, where failure means you starve and success means you never have to work again, you have a much bigger incentive to go the extra distance.