This September, Shazam announced users had deployed their app’s name-that-tune/media discovery function more than 10 billion times to peg down different songs, television shows and advertisements. Each month, ten million more people jump on the platform to listen and engage with all kinds of media; and according to Rich Riley, the best is yet to come. After 14 years at Yahoo, the 40-year-old head honcho at Shazam has embarked on a positive journey and, between meetings with his clients, answered Red Herring’s questions.

Red Herring: What is the situation at the company?

Rich Riley: We are in a phase of accelerated growth. It took us ten years to get to the first billion transactions. Then 10 months for the second billion. [And two months to go from the ninth to the tenth billion.] And we can anticipate that it will go faster in the near future.

RH: How are you expanding the company’s mission?

RR: Shazam’s core value and roots remain in mobile. Consumers decide to engage in music and they expect Shazam to provide a magical experience. Recently we have added dimensions that make it richer by providing historical perspectives, graphs and other elements which make it unique, and a leadership position for our company.

RR: Where we are extending the franchise? TV has become the next frontier and we are making TV “Shazamable.” [As U.S. programming already integrates Shazam,] over time, we anticipate that every show, every program [outside the U.S.] will integrate Shazam and we are currently holding talks with major networks to convert this new step into a reality. We are also working with advertisers to transform their 30 second experience into a deeper engagement. We are continuously adding to our capabilities by so doing.

RH: What drives this explosive growth?

RR: At its core, Shazam is a technology company. Our engineers create new releases of our apps and update them every month, at a faster rate than ever. This allows us to reach customers better with the latest version.

Also we have [a] new set of opportunities: we are in constant conversations to facilitate the mobile strategy of our partners, in programming or in advertising. [We are now working with] a larger variety of applications or verticals, making their ads clickable since we can produce anything on a HTML canvas [and that makes it easier].

 And we are spending our time evangelizing our [capabilities, so] the next frontier is expanding all the time.

RH: What is your mandate as a CEO?

RR: Since I joined, I have to [achieve] the optimal balance and make sure we have the right people [to lead] the 200 Shazam employees in the right direction. My second task is to spend time with all our stakeholders, media companies, networks, advertisers, with whom we have partnerships. Those are high level partnerships. We work closely with Apple, Amazon, Audio, Spotify among others. For example, Shazam sells [$300M each year, which translates into 500,000 songs per day on all platforms,] so you can imagine what it means in terms of relationship for all parties involved. But it goes beyond, since we deal with record labels, events, etc.

RH: Any gap between your perception prior to joining and what you eventually learned during the first 100 days?

RR: Sometimes CEOs are disappointed but in this case I did perform my due diligence beforehand and I spent a lot of time with Andrew Fisher who was CEO for over eight years and [is] now Chairman. I spoke to longtime board members like Nenad Marovac and investor Kevin Murphy from Kleiner Perkins to get their perspective. I realized three positive things: that I could develop an invaluable partnership with Andy; that customers loved Shazam’s experience much more even than what I thought; and that the opportunity is larger than we planned.

RH: If everything is rosy, why change the CEO?

RR: The company may have needed someone to grow rapidly from the current stage and someone who had operated in a more complex environment on a larger scale. Also the U.S. is a real focus on our current development.

For me, this represents a fantastic opportunity after 14 years at Yahoo! to work with 200 people, well beyond the five-people startups in a garage, yet to move at a fast pace. It is quite rare to have such a market impact with a strong team in different functions in a company of Shazam’s size.

RH: So what is the roadmap?

RR: We have one of the top ten apps in the world. Shazam is the fundamental way to connect media and content [with people via their smart devices. And it has the potential to be integrated with an innumerable set of verticals such as the retail environment and radio.] It is increasingly relevant to billions of people and we [plan] to execute towards their sharing a magical experience. And the IPO is a fundamental milestone to focus on.

RH: Compared to Google and Facebook, is Shazam too green for an IPO at this stage? Is the business model predictable enough?

RR: Public market investors aspire to growth and momentum. They want to see consumer engagement and progress (more people and more use of Shazam). They want to see technology and category leadership. Since I came on board, we have met with well known bankers and experts and I think the key word is predictability and not really an absolute revenue level. At least that’s what I have understood from these briefings.

Consequently, our job is to put the team, the controls, the accounting and more importantly to continue getting more customers. We put the company in an IPO readiness state first and decide later when it is right. By the way, IPOs are highly dependent upon the overall environment which we do not control so the best we can do is to solidify the prerequisites. Maybe a year or two from now, we will find ourselves in a position to decide on an IPO. Our investors have been patient and backed us up and it has taken a long time.

We are well-financed after Carlos Slim and other firms invested [more than $80 million] in Shazam at a far higher valuation than Series A players such as DN Capital and Nenad Marovac. We have a solid balance sheet so we should focus on our knitting, to develop Shazam around the world.

The round was led by T. Rowe Price, Tiger Global Management and other public market investors, with participation by its previous venture capital investors Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Samsung Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures. The round brings the company’s total financing to $245 million, and follows its Series B of $40 million last year.

“In our view, Pure represents a rare combination of disruptive innovation, strong leadership, and strong growth. In particular, customer references were excellent,” said Henry Ellenbogen of T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. “We look forward to working with Pure as they scale and strive toward becoming a public company.”

Pure Storage produces Flash Array, a solid state storage solution that lowers the price of flash storage to about $5 per gigabyte. The company essentially makes solid state storage at a price comparable to traditional storage, but at 10x its speed, space and power efficiency.

The money will be used to bolster R&D efforts as well as expand internationally. It also helps prepare the company for an IPO, the company indicated in a press release. Over the last 10 months, the company has extended into 10 new countries, including  the U.K., Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Japan, Korea, Australia, and Singapore.

Along with the funding, the company also announced adding former Data Domain CEO Frank Slootman to its board.

“Pure Storage is experiencing much of what we did at Data Domain,” said Slootman. “They’re replacing one storage media (disk) with another (flash). They pioneered the use of inline data reduction to remove the cost hurdle for the media upgrade, and, as a result of being the first to get this right they are growing about as fast as companies can grow organically. I am glad to be able to offer my own perspective in driving and managing growth to the top tier board of directors and leadership team at Pure.”

Pure Storage competes against legacy storage solutions EMC Corp and NetApp, which offers flash storage solutions at a much higher rate of $20 to $50 per gigabyte. It also competes against startups such as Nimble Storage and Skyera. Earlier this month, Skyera released its latest generation (link to “Skyera’s Latest Gen Boosts Data Capacity by 10X for ½ the Price” shared on Google Docs but not published) that offers flash for $1.99 per gigabyte, or 49 cents after data deduplication techniques are applied.

Dubbed TV+, the company’s first smart TV will be produced by TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd, with a 48-inch screen costing 4,567 yuan ($746). Sales launched with the company’s announcement. A more competitively priced model will launch in November at a price of 2,999 yuan. The TVs will offer over 200,000 selected high-definition videos, movies and drama series for free.

“With the cooperation with iQIYI and Baidu, we have become the first Chinese TV maker to have incorporated the Internet business model into the conventional TV business,” said Hao Yi, Chief Executive Officer of TCL Multimedia, in a press release. “The launch of TV+ has not just reinforced our leading product strengths, but has strengthened the application of information technologies in our operations. This has established a firm footing in consolidating the Group’s presence in the league of world-class TV brands and has significantly accelerated its incorporation of information technologies in the conventional TV business.”

The smart TVs will offer content from Baidu’s IQiyi.com, which it acquired last year. The sale, which was combined with Baidu’s June acquisition of PPStream Inc, the Internet video company, gave Baidu the largest online video platform in China.

With this latest release, Baidu will compete against Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce engine that released a set-top box TV last July. The device uses Alibaba’s ecommerce and online payment systems such as Tmall, Taobao and Alipay, which allow users to shop and pay bills from a television. Alibaba’s TV also features an app store for video game purchases and music streaming services. Both Baidu and Alibaba will also compete against Samsung’s and Apple’s smart TVs.

IResearch, the consultancy company, has estimated that the Chinese online video market will be worth 16.2 billion yuan next year, Bloomberg noted.

Molex provides Apple with products like multimedia connectors, or as they’re more commonly known: “Firewires.”

Molex creates electronic parts like connectors, fiber-optic products, antennas and sockets for a variety of verticals including data and computing, telcos and automotive. The company reported gross profitability at more than $1.06 billion in 2013, down half a percentage point from 2012. With the deal struck, Molex joins the Koch Industries portfolio, which already includes Georgia-Pacific LLC, The Matador Cattle Company, and more resource-based ventures bearing the Koch name like Koch Minerals, LLC and Koch Pipeline Company, LP.

Koch Industries and Molex share similar origin stories, as Koch Industries is led by brothers David and Charles Koch and Molex, until recently, was owned and operated by the Krehbiel family.

Per the deal, Koch now owns all Molex’s outstanding common, Class A, and Class B stock––and laid down a pretty penny more for the shares than they traded for the previous Friday. (Stocks of the common, A and B variety are distinguished by associated voting rights.) According to the release, Koch dropped capital at a 42 percent equity increase (up 31 percent for common stock, 56 percent for Class A common stock). Obviously, premiums make deals more appealing to investors (get a brush-up here.)

It is widely accepted that most companies are merged with a premium over their stock value, around 20%. Molex, with 42 percent, seems in line with recent acquisitions which according to pundits and financial sources are higher in 2013 than usual.

Molex reports net revenues at 3.6 billion worldwide in 2013, 3.8 percent more than last year. The company, based in Lisle, IL, chose this moment for acquisition to reward longtime supporters and employees. “After 75 years this was a difficult decision, but our board of directors and our family believe that this transaction…provides outstanding benefits for all our stakeholders,” said Fred Krehbiel, co-chairman of the Molex board in the release. “The transaction is expected to provide substantial opportunities for our worldwide employees, many of whom have spent much of their working lives at Molex and are responsible for the company’s long term success.” Following the deal, the Krehbiels will give up their stock and positions and leave the company to Koch.

The news makes no mention of future product releases or jumps into new sectors––only of a continued “track record of growth and investment in people, innovation and technology,” says Martin Slark, CEO and vice chairman of Molex in the release.

Documents Molex filed with the SEC say the company’s sales to Apple account for 14 percent of net revenue in 2013, though they’re not Apple’s only connector provider. Risks to the business, also listed in the papers, provide clues to reasons for an acquisition now. According to the company, Molex faces intense competition, industry consolidation, a dependency on new products and pressure to lower prices.

Though its hard to imagine an electronic parts producer struggling in a digital age, the industry brings its own challenges. And a partnership with Koch could give Molex room to work, so that they won’t have to innovate under the gun (and on the cheap) in a capital-intensive and crowded industry. “Connector Supplier” ranks Molex third on the top 10 list of connector manufacturers, as it pulled more than $3.5 billion in sales two years running (2011-2012). In past months, the industry’s looked a little bleak; but hopefuls wait for a 4.4 percent overall connector sales increase before end of full year 2013.

As the Krehbiels bow out, the Kochs are poised to take Molex to new heights. Though Molex has already scaled international (they have 41 manufacturing locations in 15 countries; and just, 29 percent of its 2013 net revenues stem from the Americas), Koch Industries’ money, resources and guidance will help further penetrate their markets. Currently, Molex has captured about 8 percent of the connector industry: a number they’re looking to increase.

“Once the transaction is completed, Molex will be even better positioned to navigate an evolving industry,” the company said in an employee FAQ about the deal. “With Koch behind us, we will be able to protect and grow our market share, ensure continuity for customers, provide growth opportunities for our employees, and maintain the overall stability of the business.”

Implications of the deal may affect Apple on the political, rather than technological, front. Already, news sources have penned headlines that poke at Koch Industries’ leadership’s politics; yesterday, the Daily Beast ran an article titled, “Get Ready to Support the Kochs, Liberal Apple Fans.”

As to business, it’s going on as usual for now, Molex says. Until the year’s out and the deal’s closed, “we need all employees to remain focused on their day-to-day responsibilities,” the employee FAQ states.

The third generation in Skyera’s solid state platform, skyEagle offers flash storage at a price for $1 per gigabyte less than its previous release, while improving performance to an industry leading 5M IOPS, according to the company’s own claims. It adds over 2.5 petabytes after compression and deduplication. It leverages the high density of the Most Advanced 1y/1z NAND (MAN) flash chips together with its own high performing flash controller technology. The new platform features 16 interchangeable 16Gb Fibre Channel and 10Gb Ethernet ports and supports a mix of Fibre Channel and iSCSI block-based SAN protocols, plus 96 lanes of optional PCIe connectivity. It also supports NFS and CIFS.

The company claims installation can be done in as little as 10 minutes.

“Last year’s release of skyHawk offered higher performance at a price point much better than anyone close to us” Skyera’s CEO Radoslav Danilak told Red Herring. “This year, we’ve gone beyond that by an order of magnitude. We are changing how flash is working as well as how people work with Flash. We are offering customized commodity Flash at the same price as consumer storage with enterprise endurance and reliability.”

In addition to a consumer grade discount, Skyera’s customers also gain greater control over the system, Danilak contends. The data is routinely backed up at multiple ends, so that if any components fail, the system continues operating. “You can replace components while the system is still running,” Danilak said.

“Skyera is enabling smaller companies to have Facebook or Google type storage systems in the cloud by shrinking the density more than 100 times,” Danilak claimed. “It’s similar to the transition of bringing the mainframe to the personal computer. One rack of our systems gives you a very powerful data system. We can deliver big data to just about every customer.”

The company recently raised $51.6 million from Dell Ventures, WD Ventures, and several Tier 1 NAND Flash vendors. Though Danilak declined to state what last year’s generation did for the company’s base, he allowed that the company had delivered on its investors’ plan within 5 percent of accuracy. He anticipates similar results with the latest release.

Danilak expects future generations of Skyera’s platform to be “even crazier disruptions than generation three,” he said. “Interestingly, it was our customers who pushed us to this capacity. The market demanded, and our engineers worked around the clock to deliver it.”

While the company competes against data storage entities such as Pure Storage or Nimbus, it outdoes these players by an order of magnitude, explained Frankie Roohparvar, COO of Skyera.

“skyHawk’s introduction last year put us in a class by ourselves in regards to capacity and performance,” Roohparvar stated. “We felt that our only competition was us, and now we have disrupted ourselves not by a factor of 2 over 18 months in accordance with Moore’s law, but by over 10 times the performance and capacity in just 12 months.”

With the Google investment, the company also gains access to Google’s technology, Uber explained in a blog post confirming the deal following earlier media reports.

“On one end we have Google, a technology powerhouse, with billions of users on an incredibly complementary product suite ranging from Google Maps to Android to self-driving vehicles,” wrote Travis Kalanick, Uber’s founder and CEO. “We look to Google and Google Ventures for the strategic connectivity to their product initiatives alongside the expertise that comes with evangelizing new technology with governments and regulatory bodies around the world.”

What’s more, that may be only the iceberg tip of Uber’s cash infusion. AllThingsD unearthed a Certificate of Incorporation that indicated the company was closing on $361.2 million in a round that involved the sale of millions of stock shares and values the company at $3.5 billion.

Uber sold 1,913,782 shares of C-1 stock, estimated to each be worth about $142, for a total of $272,790,486.It also sold 775,092 shares of C-2 stock at about $114 per share for a total of $88,385,291. Benchmark, a previous investor in the company who also bought bought 105,234 shares of the C-1 stock, further invested another $15 million in this round. TPG bought 775,092 shares of Series C-2, according to filings.

As part of the investment, David Drummond , Google senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, and David Bonderman, founding partner of TPG, will be joining Uber’s board.

TPG was a strategic investor, being “one of the most prolific private equity firms in the world,” Kalanick explained in the blog.

“TPG owns and operates companies,” Kalanick writes. “The Uber deal is obviously very different, but their deep rolodex of operations executives and their regulatory know-how in highly regulated, ‘atoms’-based industries in the farthest corners of the globe is where TPG shines. David Bonderman’s vision and relationships will be invaluable to Uber as we become a global brand.”

Investment in the round proved competitive, with Google sealing the investment through a private meeting between CEO Larry Page and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, sources told AllThingsD.

Google’s impressive check means that $258 million of Google’s $300 million annual fund has already been cashed, so don’t expect the search engine to sign onto another deal like this anytime soon.

The deal gives Uber valuable fuel to maintain its position in an increasingly competitive market. Lyft, a company competitive to Uber whose drivers offer on demand rides, recently raised $60 million. Hailo, a 2012 Red Herring Europe winner, has raised a total of $50 million. Uber’s cash infusion should put it in another league. Uber’s last round in 2011 raised $37.5 million with a valuation of $330 million.

Uber is reportedly on track to earn $125 million in revenue this year.

With Locket, co-founder and CEO Yunha Kim had brands in mind she thought users might like to interact with, but customers quickly took ad selection upon themselves. “We were getting thousands of emails from users that are saying, hey, I want to see ads from this company or that company,” she says. Soon, those emails prompted a platform allowing customers to request and rank which brands advertised on their phones.

According to the company’s press release, submissions flooded in following the “My Ads” platform’s appearance on lock screens. Within 20 minutes, users had sent in 1,000 entries. The campaign saw a click-through rate of 36.2 percent, meaning almost 4 of 10 people engaged with Locket instead of swiping messaging to the side.

The platform’s a triple-win for Locket, consumers and advertisers. Locket gets users increasingly engaged in their product; customers get say in what they’re pitched; and advertisers get crucial data on ready-made markets. “Advertisers are spending a lot of time and money and resources on trying to find out who their demographics are,” Kim says. Locket can measure reach. “I think that’s more efficient than trying to beat around the bush and guessing what ads users would like to see.”

Following the success of the campaign, the company’s launching a financial outreach program called Locket Cares. Currently, Locket’s partnering with Los Angeles non-prof Free Arts for Abused Children, which brings art programming to more than 500,000 underprivileged kids. “Locket is backing the organization by driving donations and featuring children’s beautiful and inspiring artwork on Locket users’ lock screens,” the release states. Kim says Locket Cares eliminates confusion around where to donate and when and makes charitable giving one-swipe simple. “We were thinking, how cool would it be for users to be like, I’m a Locket Caregiver, or Locket Giver,” Kim says. “Then all you have to do is click on that button, and that allows you to give back to the community every single time you unlock your phone.”

Kim foresees Locket letting users choose where their donations go, but right now they’ve paired with Free Arts for a trial run.

As for Locket’s future, they’re connecting with investors and looking to raise additional capital. “We are actually in the fundraising process for the next, a bigger round,” Kim says. “We have our previous investors that would like to join but we are also looking for the best partners that already have experience in what we’re doing, and [who would] be able to add new perspective and add value to our business.”

More money means expansion from the Android platform. “With the fundraising, as soon as we close that, we will be hiring aggressively,” Kim says. Additional staff will help develop an iPhone and tablet app for Locket.

According to the announcement, the $45 million Security-as-a-Service company already partners with more than half of the largest providers that host or deploy cloud services. With threats to data’s welfare on the rise, the market for services that keep it safe grows. Alert Logic’s partnership with Welsh Carson allows for further tech investment and enables an international future for the company.

“Businesses are becoming more and more dependant all the time on strategic applications and data that resides in data centers,” says Alert Logic CEO Gray Hall. “As people move [applications and data] to the cloud they need different types of security solutions to protect their infrastructure in the cloud, and that’s our business.”

While the company’s anchored by its American roots for now, Welsh Carson’s resources give Alert Logic’s the potential to expand their reach. That means more products in more markets. “Three to five years from now we would expect to cover all major markets around the globe, and have a significantly expanded security product suite,” Hall says. “We’ve always invested heavily in our technology and are actively doing that today, but with Welsh Carson’s backing we have greater resources to invest faster, and not only making our products and technology scale more effectively, but also broadening the coverage of the cloud security services.”

The board decided last year Alert Logic would seek recapitalization opportunities in 2013, and give investors the chance to realize their investments or stick around long-term. Morgan Stanley led the company through the process and into an enviable position. ‘It wound up being a competitive scenario [to partner with Alert Logic] where several of the top private equity firms in the world submitted bids and Welsh Carson came out on top.”

The partners now share a vision for the future and agree on ways to realize it. “The management team and Welsh Carson see eye to eye on the size of the opportunity, the long-term duration of the opportunity, the company strategy and we think that this market segment that we’re pursuing is multiple billions in fact we’ve estimated the market at more than $5 billion,” Hall says. “And today as a [$45 million] company we believe we’ve only scratched the surface of that opportunity.”

Partnership with Welsh Carson provides capital and cushion as Alert Logic weighs options for its financial future.

“Management and Welsh Carson have a common mind and a common strategy that we’ve bought into that we think will be successful over the next few years,” Hall says. “What this means for the company three to five years from now could range from an IPO, to simply maintaining our independence as a private company; and the fact that Welsh Carson is starting now gives us the flexibility to keep our options open there.”

Both sites share a lot in common, mainly by offering searchable listings that can be narrowed down through a variety of filters, such as neighborhood, school district, access to public transportation, and price.

Founded in 2006, StreetEasy is a small company at 34 employees. Though it launched with an original focus on New York City, its biggest market, it has since expanded into a number of other areas such as Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.

“Simply put, StreetEasy has cracked the code in New York,” said Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff . “They now have a local network effect where nearly every New York broker is active on StreetEasy because of the site’s large audience and comprehensive data.”

Though a press release on the deal did not detail how the acquisition will be structured, it appears the company will continue StreetEasy in its present form, which makes sense considering the website’s sizable presence already established on the real estate market.

“At StreetEasy, we pride ourselves on bringing much-needed transparency to the New York City real estate marketplace, and being the primary reference site for consumers and real estate professionals,” said Michael Smith, co-founder and CEO of StreetEasy. “We’re very excited to be joining forces with Zillow, the largest national brand in mobile and online real estate, as we continue our commitment to data integrity, innovation and collaboration with the local real estate community.”

The deal provides the real estate giant with a solid foothold in a valuable market, but came with an expensive price tag for an audience of just over a million monthly unique visitors. Yet it further solidifies Zillow’s hold on the real estate market as the real estate giant faces rising competition as the US market rebounds. Its competitor Trulia, an online residential real estate listing site covering markets across the country, applied last March for its own $150 million follow-on offering to be used for growth and acquisitions.

The deal will likely be the first of several, as Zillow announced plans to file for a similar follow-on of public stock just as the deal with StreetEasy was announced. The company will seek to sell 2.5 million shares of Class A common stock, equivalent to around $228 million based on Friday’s closing share price of $91.22.

Just a few weeks ago, Zillow reported record second quarter revenue of $46.9 million, a 69 percent increase over the same quarter last year. It also reported a loss of $10.2 million, mostly due to marketing and acquisition expenses.

“It has always been our mission to make the world more open and connected. Although more than a billion people around the world already use Facebook every month, we are always looking for ways to help connect the rest of the world as well,” Facebook’s Director of Product Management Tom Stocky  explained in a Facebook status update announcing the deal. “Voice technology has become an increasingly important way for people to navigate mobile devices and the web, and this technology will help us evolve our products to match that evolution. We believe this acquisition is an investment in our long-term product roadmap as we continue towards our company’s mission.”

Stocky pointed to the acqui-hire intent of the acquisition, stating “With this deal we will welcome some of the industry’s most talented people to our engineering teams in Menlo Park, California.” Facebook has indicated it will continue to support the Jibbigo app for the time being.

Considering Facebook’s international social audience, it is easy to understand why it would want to boost its speech translation abilities with an in-house approach. The social network had relied on translation services through Microsoft’s Bing. Owning its own translator services gives it better leverage in making translation a core focus of its platform as it pursues its mission to make the world more connected.

“Facebook, with its mission to make the world more open and connected, provides the perfect platform to apply our technology at a truly global scale,” the Mobile Technologies team said in a statement on Jibbigo’s blog. “We look forward to continuing to develop our technology at Facebook and finding new and interesting ways to apply it to Facebook’s long-term product roadmap.”

Mobile Technologies will join Facebook at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.