{"id":1041681,"date":"2026-10-08T08:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T03:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1041681"},"modified":"2026-10-08T08:49:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T03:19:04","slug":"meet-brian-acton-whatsapp-co-founder-who-was-rejected-for-job-by-facebook-in-2009-tech-giant-later-acquired-messaging-app-for-up-to-19-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/10\/08\/meet-brian-acton-whatsapp-co-founder-who-was-rejected-for-job-by-facebook-in-2009-tech-giant-later-acquired-messaging-app-for-up-to-19-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Brian Acton, WhatsApp co-founder who was rejected for job by Facebook in 2009, tech giant later acquired messaging app for up to $19 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, was once rejected by Facebook for a job. Years before Facebook bought WhatsApp for a deal valued up to $19 billion, Acton&#8217;s job application was rejected. In 2009, he revealed publicly that Facebook rejected him, but instead of criticising the tech giant, he said something no one expected. Acton said that the job interview gave him a golden chance to meet &#8220;some fantastic people.&#8221; He added that he at that time felt like looking forward to &#8220;life&#8217;s next adventure.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, no one knew that a rejection will soon become the reason behind a remarkable technology story. Five years after rejecting Acton, Facebook returned to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, was once rejected by Facebook for a job. Years before Facebook bought WhatsApp for a deal valued up to $19 billion, Acton&#8217;s job application was rejected. In 2009, he revealed publicly that Facebook rejected him, but instead of criticising the tech giant, he said something no one expected. Acton said that the job interview gave him a golden chance to meet &#8220;some fantastic people.&#8221; He added that he at that time felt like looking forward to &#8220;life&#8217;s next adventure.&#8221; Interestingly, no one knew that a rejection will soon become the reason behind a remarkable technology [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,60,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1041681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","category-telecom-the-economic-times","category-the-economic-times"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1041681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1041710,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041681\/revisions\/1041710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1041681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1041681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1041681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}