The tweet specifically says "if he was going to run OpenAI full-time ..". Sounds like they were fine with him moonlighting other projects, Worldcoin, OpenAI as a non-profit, but if YC wasn't going to be his primary "full-time" focus then he would need to choose.
> Sounds like they were fine with him moonlighting other projects
Even that’s not quite right. OpenAI had been a research project inside YC. So there was no “moonlighting” about it (and Worldcoin started around the same time Sam left YC).
It seems everyone accepted that things qualitatively changed when OpenAI stopped being a non-profit research project inside YC to becoming a for-profit venture, and they just had an adult conversation about it.
OK, it was independent but established with funding from YC Research and Jessica (among others including Sam himself and Elon) and initially operating from YC office space.
So it was always something that was closely linked to YC and his involvement with it was generally accepted as being harmonious with his role running YC, until it became for-profit.
I haven’t ever heard of worldcoin but ChatGPT has actually made it to the average person’s lexicon, and been covered in the NYTimes repeatedly. Surely some non jobs take more effort than others…
Right, so, no evidence that they had no problem with him running Worldcoin. It could all have been part of the “Sam now has too much on his plate to adequately focus on YC” conversation.
Personally I don't care if pg is completely honest or if sam was fired or not. It doesn't have meaningful impact on my view of either.