[davej]

For context, Helen Tonor [0] was a board member of OpenAI before they tried to fire Sam Altman. She claimed that Sam was fired by YC in a recent interview [1]. In the interview, she implied that Sam's firing at YC was kept quiet and that there was something underhanded about it.

[0] https://x.com/hlntnr

[1] https://link.chtbl.com/TEDAI

[bookaway]

To be fair to Helen Toner, she was probably was going off the Washington Post/WSJ articles that were discussed here 6 months ago.[0] And pg has been trying to de-sensationalize the issue ever since, and often doing a pretty terrible job at it by complimenting Altman without directly denying certain statements.

The WP article implied that there was a drop in Altman's performance and hands-on presence due to multi-tasking of his other interests including OpenAI, whereas pg seems to imply that jl gave the ultimatum to Altman before there were any performance complaints.

It's also a little strange that pg doesn't mention the for-profit Worldcoin at all, which announced a 4 mil seed round a few months prior to Altman exiting YC and for which Altman was already CEO.

I'm not sure pg is aware how much he's risking, or how much he's putting Jessica's reputation at risk. He often posts touting Jessica as being a great judge of character.[1] The world is witnessing in real time just how great a character his prince really is. But at least he had the courtesy to mention that Jessica was the one that gave Altman the ultimatum.

There was something missing in his post though. He forgot to add "Sam and Paul" at the end of his statement.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38378216

[1] To be fair, it's usually for determining whether the person has characteristics that make a good startup founder, like resilience or co-founder compatibility. "Having moral fiber" might be at the bottom of the list in terms of priority.

[m3kw9]

“To be fair Helen was going off of “articles” from WaPo” is some kind of defence. What kind of competence did she have if she just forwards stuff without thinking or investigating first? I would say this solidifies why she wasn’t fit for the job

[nickfromseattle]

I read there was additional drama related to Sam leaving YC; unilaterally declaring himself Chairman of YC, including a YC blog announcement that was quickly deleted. [0]

[0] https://archive.is/Vl3VR

[ml-anon]

Of course theres additional drama and context. PG is retconning it to make himself look less incompetent and absent.

[wrsh07]

Honestly, I thought her Ted ai interview was balanced and reasonable. I don't recall her mentioning yc, but I might have missed it.

That said, the interviewer tries to sensationalize the upcoming interview as much as possible in the intro, so I didn't love that

[gbnvc]

But the original post says otherwise, who do I believe?

[davej]

I would give more credibility to the firsthand account (PG & Jessica) rather than speculations from a fired board member.

[littlestymaar]

No one, it's all PR game at play here, and there's no reason that anyone is being fully transparent.

[the_real_cher]

I was fired from Taco Bell as a kid and I would talk trash about the management and the company to anyone who asked.

I can't imaging being fired from a company like OpenAI and being asked my thoughts about the people responsible and the company and people taking it seriously! LOL