> this is how HBO started streaming, by buying what MLB had built

I think you might be referring to Disney/Disney+ and BAMTech → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Streaming_Services

(Super helpful answer by the way!!)

Nope I was referring to HBOGo. Bamtech’s first customer was HBOGo before Disney bought them.

Ah! Had no idea. Guess the point is true twice over then. What a quietly great company.

There's an app for Mac/iOS ($4.99) called WhiteNoise that does a similar thing. It also has a really extensive library of new sounds you can add: http://www.tmsoft.com/white-noise/

Android too. It was one of the first things I bought when I moved from iOS to Android. Helps me sleep.

Jane > all three

It rather seems like "Make something people like to argue about", which I guess leads to the same thing in the end.

The stats from comscore show how heavily skewed toward the younger demographic Snapchat is: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bv3CIHgCYAEF0P0.jpg:large

(╯ಠ_ಠ）╯︵ s||ɐʍʎɐd

Anyone have the text of the article?

Got it:

Snapchat Fetches $10 Billion Valuation

Kleiner Perkins Investment Gives the Messaging Services a Shot in the Arm

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has agreed to invest in Snapchat Inc., an ephemeral messaging service, at close to a $10 billion valuation, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Snapchat, which has talked to several potential investors in recent months, is in the process of raising a large investment round that would make it one of the most valuable private, tech startups despite virtually no revenue.

The venture-capital firm committed to invest up to $20 million in May, one person added.

At least one strategic investor has also committed to invest in the round, which isn't yet closed, two of the people said.

A spokeswoman for Kleiner Perkins wasn't immediately available for comment. A Snapchat spokeswoman said: "The valuation of our business and our capital requirements are the least exciting aspects of supporting the Snapchat community. We have no further comment at this time."

Snapchat's valuation, at about $2 billion last year, has soared even as the startup lacks a clear business model. Investors see potential to make money from the millions of teenagers and college students on the three-year-old app, a group that is highly coveted by advertisers and increasingly difficult to reach through traditional media like television and magazines.

New capital could help Snapchat gear up for its first foray into advertising, expected later this year. The company has held talks with media companies and advertisers in recent weeks about a new content service called Snapchat Discovery, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. The service that would let users read daily editions of publications, video clips and ads by holding down a finger on the screen, like they do with photos and other messages on the app before disappearing.

They had already built a pretty full-featured beta that was used by many when they raised funding. It was not "pre-launch" in the way Color was.

The implications of this are pretty interesting. People will only use software that solves actual problems they have. Software development is now more accessible to more people because of all these frameworks and tools. It only follows that the people most familiar with actual problems will be able to create the most used software, and those people aren't necessarily going to be software engineers by trade. The question "How long before we have a billion-dollar acquisition offer for a one-engineer startup?" is crazy, but likely not too far in the future, but even more interestingly, "How long before we have a billion-dollar acquisition offer for a zero-engineer startup?" might not be that far off either.