It's hardly unique to startups, and has more to do with the industries they're in than the company size. Mine is still hiring very aggressively but we are in the health research industry which didn't face the same sort of "unwinding", and have always been remote so there's no empty office we're obligated to pay rent for. Meanwhile I have friends in very established publicly traded companies who have been laid off or had their benefits cut already. One lost all company matching on 401ks this year.

VCs remember that there are some very successful companies that came out of the 2008 recession, and many are doing a lot more than usual to help the more promising parts of their portfolio weather this storm.

This article fails to highlight how any of these startups (on that note, how is AirBnB a startup) are worse positioned than their larger competitors. Not one of the ways that workers are impacted that are mentioned in the article is unique to any size of public or private company.