Startup experience does not add value in the job market ?

Most people will use quick heuristics to "score" you because they go through so many candidates each day. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world where people will comb through and try to evaluate what kind of projects you've worked on, so you'll have to meet them where they are.

I feel like i don't want to take risks with startups anymore since that might hinder my hire-ability in the job market after the stints. But i like the speed of growth at startups.

There is a wide spectrum of startups out there that are well known enough where they command as much respect, like OpenAI. You could look for unicorn startups that are still growing fast but haven't yet been affected by big company culture.

Big companies in particular will place a huge positive multiplier on other big company experience while nerfing startup experience heavily. It makes sense as the best indicator of success for an engineer coming into a big company is if they have worked at a big company before. It's generally good to work at a big company at some point in your career, which is why I recommend that most engineers try to work at Big Tech at least once if they haven't already.

However, startups will often value startup experience more, especially if it's a good startup. Startups have massive variance from the no-name garbage pre-seed startups that die within a year to the OpenAIs and Notions of the world.

At the end of the day, figure out your goals and work backwards from there. If you think startups are more fun and better for growth (they definitely are when you choose the right ones), then keep working for and applying to top startups.