Yes. It stands to reason that if a manager can demotivate you, then they must be able to do the opposite. Both building the vibe and killing it can achieve that in terms of extrinsic motivation, culture, the psychological contract, and so on.
These are important factors to consider for people who work in highly collaborative teams as opposed to those who prefer to be 10x lone wolves, which is the impression I get from the article and the overall startup vibe I've experienced over the past few years.
HN might be over-indexed on the "leave me alone to do my work", "I don't have friends I have colleagues," type of person but it's not representative of the entire population.