Both of them sound scammy. Vanity domains and cheap TLDs can be visually attractive but also inherently signify that you can't afford a .com commercial TLD. .com domains come with a prestige status, but you can make it look suspicious by creating a long drawn-out name (myathenaai sounds a lot scammier than athena.com).

You should be careful making broad conclusions about things that might not be causally related. The startup scene has a habit of using anecdotal experience as hard evidence of some big takeaway that's often not even true. I won't claim to know the situation any better than you do, but if you were a late-stage startup I would give you the same advice r/domains did.