it's the same endorsement of skill as a university diploma nowadays - not correlated in the slightest

surviving a startup says a lot more about skill than going through employee churn of some bigname corp

Personally I don't think it is the same as employment + reference. Imo it is fairly easy to game university and get a good degree from a "top" school without actually learning that much at all. Harder to get a good work reference if you don't deliver at your job.