WhatsNotApp: When Ignoring LinkedIn Messages Is a Bad Idea

Could have, would have, should have.

As you can see from the photo above, Pete Nofelt (@pcnofelt), who works at New York-based Foursquare in San Francisco, got a note from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton in mid-2012 via LinkedIn.

“How are things going for you over at Foursquare?,” wrote Acton to Nofelt, in what was clearly a soft recruiting attempt for the relatively new messaging startup using the social business service.

Nofelt did not reply at the time — much to his regret today. WhatsApp just sold to Facebook for $19 billion, giving huge windfalls to every one of the few dozen employees there.

Wrote Nofelt, who left his job as a senior software engineer at Foursquare last week, on Facebook: “Filed under messages I probably should have replied to.”

That would be a yes.

(Thanks, Pete, for letting us feel your pain.)

Nofelt later tweeted that he had no regrets, which makes him a bigger person than me:

Hey @karaswisher just to clarify, no real regrets, just a funny thing that happened. I think an awesome job @foursquare makes up for it :).

— Pete Nofelt (@pcnofelt) February 22, 2014

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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