This is a false choice. It assumes that most established companies have no "soul", but that most startups do. This is simply not true.
"Crucially, the biggest advantage of working lower down the spectrum is that mistakes don’t stick with you. In general, mistakes don’t typically stick with you, but the further up the spectrum you go, the tighter knit the community. Make a mistake at the bottom of the spectrum, and there’s enough people making mistakes that it’s unlikely your mistakes will give you a bad reputation. On the other hand, screw up a company with $41mm in funding, and those mistakes are more likely to follow you."
Obviously, there are good mistakes and bad mistakes, but in general, making career decisions based on where your mistakes will go unnoticed is a path to mediocrity, or worse.
Anyone interested in progressing as a professional should think twice about working at a company where major mistakes are of no consequence. It's hard to improve yourself if you're surrounded by incompetence, and if mistakes made out of ineptitude or negligence have no impact on your reputation, chances are you're not working on anything that matters.