Only a small portion of the world actually cares about YC. Besides as is Silicon Valley culture failure in a high profile way gets you to a better place because you have fame within the industry. I expect Marissa Mayer to easily land a plumb job at a VC firm with full partnership. (If she doesn't start one that is).
I am pretty sure Sam cares about YC. Sam would mostly likely land on his feet if YC did go down in flames, but he would not be happy if he felt he was responsible.
He wouldn't be responsible. PG choose him, so the buck would stop with the person who made the decision to entrust the family jewels to someone else. And of course Sam would not be happy to be at the helm but the other thing is that over time the market changes so we wouldn't know for sure if it wouldn't have gone down even if PG were still around. [1]
[1] Noting General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, Jack Welsh and the collapse of the financial system that led to getting rid of finance as a profit center.
