WhatsApp and nine
other ideas that were
snubbed before making
it big
From The Beatles to Harry Potter, Inspector Morse and Elvis, there are numerous brainwaves that first fell on deaf ears
WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton became overnight billionaires courtesy of Facebook when the social network giant bought their app.
But Facebook bosses should be kicking themselves after turning Acton down for a job in 2009.
At the time he took to Twitter saying: "Facebook turned me down.. looking forward to the next adventure."
And what an adventure followed - his next venture was WhatsApp, which shook up the world of messaging, turning users away from text messages and Facebook.
The service now has 450 million users and adds approximately a million new users a day.
It’s not the first time a good idea has fallen on deaf ears.
Here are 10 other money spinning brain waves that were snubbed before making it big.
The Beatles
The Fab Four auditioned for Decca records but didn’t give a particularly good account of themselves after they got lost on the way to the London studio.
Decca rejected the band, saying “guitar groups are on the way out” and “The Beatles have no future in show business.
The record label opted to sign Brian Poole and the Tremeloes because they hailed from Dagenham and it seemed more convenient for a London record label to have them on the books than a group from Liverpool.
A few months the Beatles signed with EMI subsidiary Parlophone and the rest is history.
ET and Mars
“Is he a pig? He sure eats like one,” quipped Gertie when she first laid eyes on the small brown alien, E.T., in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster movie.
E.T. may have had a sweet tooth, but those brown, orange and yellow candies he was snacking on weren’t M&Ms.
It could have been M&Ms, but Mars passed on the chance to use their candy in “E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial” when Spielberg asked.
Instead, Hershey stepped in with Reese’s Pieces and sale jumped 65 percent in June 1982, the same month E.T. was released.
JK Rowling
In 1996 the manuscript of her first Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was turned down by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury picked it up for an advance of just £1,500.
The series went on to sell more than 450 million copies worldwide.
Then last year it was revealed Rowling’s adult book The Cuckoo’s Calling had been similarly turned down after she wrote it under a pseudonym.
The book was critically acclaimed but had sold fewer than 500 copies before the Harry Potter creator was unmasked as its author.
One leading editor bravely admitted she had unwittingly turned down the crime novel, which was billed as the debut of a former soldier, because it failed to stand out from all the other manuscripts sent in by hopeful authors.
Anne Frank
“The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level,” was one publisher’s brusque assessment of The Diary of Anne Frank.
More than a dozen others reached a similar conclusion about a book that has now been translated into more than 60 languages, with more than 30 million copies sold.
Alexander Graham Bell
It was 1876 and Bell had just sent speech down a wire through a newfangled gadget -- the telephone.
Bell, his assistant Thomas Watson, and his investors, Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders, turned their attention to commercializing their invention.
It is said that that Hubbard offered the Bell telephone patent to Western Union -- the telegraph monoply and telecom giant of the day -- in 1876 for $100,000.
William Orton the boss of Western Union, apparently replied: “After careful consideration,” he wrote to the inventor, “while it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities.”
Inspector Morse
The story goes it was the mid 1980s when a script-reader for Central Television advised his superiors not “to touch with a bargepole” a script for a new detective drama.
The writer was called Anthony Minghella and the drama turned out to be Inspector Morse.
Elvis
In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry venue, fired Elvis Presley after one performance.
He told Presley: “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”
Fred Smith
The founder of Federal Express, received a “C” on his college essay detailing his idea for a reliable overnight delivery service.
His professor at Yale told him: “Well, Fred, the concept is interesting and well formed, but in order to earn better than a “C” grade, your ideas also have to be feasible.”
Walt Disney
The creator of Mickey Mouse was fired by a newspaper editor because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.
In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim on the grounds that it would only attract riffraff
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