Hacker News Reader

Comment by hathawsh | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, if Facebook had hired him, it's unlikely he would have had enough freedom to create Whatsapp or anything like it. Even if Facebook knew what was going to happen, Facebook still made the right choice when they rejected him and later bought his company. Rejection can be a good thing for everyone.

View on HN

Maybe.. but maybe he would have been on the Messenger team and made that What's App.

I doubt that. In most companies the Managerial chain kill bottom up innovation.

There’s less than 1% chance Facebook messenger would be able to live to the philosophy of “no ads, no gimmicks, secure messaging”

That’s why startups can disrupt. It really does reward bottom up innovation.

We are talking about a startup that sold to Facebook for $19 billion dollars whose founder was rejected by Facebook when he interviewed for a job there before he started what's app. I know this is make believe world but had Facebook hired him and had he worked on messaging I bet he would have beget a similar product (in make believe land). The problem most of us Americans didn't understand was that SMS cost money (in the rest of the world) and not in the USA. Most American text plans were free and unlimited in the beginning... that was until the US mobile networks caught on to the Europeans and realized they could charge per text. So that what made what's app. And FB could have saved themselves $19B.. still.. if you are right then he probably would have left FB and started What's app on his own.

There’s a reason why the founders quit even after Facebook bought them.

Facebook is a growth at any cost kind of company. They really wouldn’t have listened to him even if he joined Facebook in the first place.

The messenger on Android sends all your text messages and phone logs to Facebook. Mark approved that in the name of growth.

There’s absolute no way Whatsapp would have been invented at Facebook. Facebook only bought it because it could have been a serious threat to their dominance.

FB would not have allowed him to make Whatsapp. It was built with a philosophy of correctness ("We can never drop a message") and privacy. Contrast that to FB's "move fast and break things" and disregard for privacy to the point that they stole users' call logs right off their phones.

So there's no way they would have listened to Acton and let him build Messenger the way he wanted.

Add to that the fact that Acton's ideas didn't yet have any market validation. Once WhatsApp was a proven success, FB was willing to pay for it, but even so they are now destroying what made it good - https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17304792/whatsapp-jan-kou...

That's assuming that some other app wouldn't have filled the messaging space.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com