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.

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.

The product’s designed to give users privacy and peace of mind, as well as a chance to disconnect. “The pocket functions effectively to protect your security, if your data is being tracked or monitored or if your location is being tracked or monitored,” says Adam Harvey, who designed the OFF Pocket in collaboration with Johanna Bloomfield. “But the other part of it, which I think is more interesting, is the psychological aspect; which, you’re placing your phone inside a bag that eliminates your connection with the phone.”

Inside the case, phones can’t send or receive signals across a range of frequencies used for communication. No signals, no data––meaning location’s untraceable and texts and calls don’t land.

Harvey’s OFF Pocket prototype debuted last year at January’s “Stealth Wear” exhibition (hosted by TANK Magazine and presented by Primitive London) along with his anti-drone garments. “The timing worked out well for the show because that was right around when drones became a daily news item,” he says. “And now it happens that I’m launching this product when cell phone tracking’s a daily news item.”

Lately, current events portray U.S. agencies less like Uncle Sam and more like Big Brother. “The recent news with the NSA, Edward Snowden, Verizon, XKeystroke and so on is only supporting––it’s providing a good argument for what people should have already been thinking about…in the last 12 years since the introduction of the Patriot Act, when we’ve been engaged in the dilemma of trading our privacy for security,” Harvey says. “Security is more important, but there is a limit. You can’t take that logic and scale it infinitely.”

“At some point people will want their privacy back and that’s what’s happening now,” he continues. “The problem is that you can’t simply ask for your privacy back.”

Harvey sees the OFF Pocket appealing to a wide audience, from middle-to-high school tweens and teens evading parents’ tracking to journalists, politicians and security industry employees. Its democratic applicability suits the Kickstarter platform well.

“This is what I see as a highly functional security or privacy product, and putting it on Kickstarter is offering it to anyone,” Harvey says. “And I think that’s important; that is, providing security, but anybody could buy it–– whether you’re a whistleblower at the NSA or you work at home and you need a break from your phone or you’re just concerned about security.”

With 11 days left, OFF Pocket’s already cleared its funding goal of $35,000 by $10,000. Its success might drive others to follow Harvey’s lead into privatized privacy.

“It’s also proving to people that there’s a market for privacy-type items,” Harvey says. “I think people are gonna see this and realize that hey, I’m onto something, and that’ll probably motivate other people to explore the business side to privacy.”

“Our biggest challenge is getting over this first hurdle, where we get enough people together, enough money together; this can’t be done on the cheap,” says Randolph Hencken of The Seasteading Institute. “So while there’s lots of people who wish they could just go tomorrow, it’s going to take a critical mass of people and capital to actualize the place.”

The Institute’s “Floating City Project” is a pipe dream made practical. Its mission may appeal to those fed up feeling voiceless in today’s political process, as seasteading gives people a fresh start.

“What holds seasteaders together is a penchant for new opportunities,” Hencken says. “A lot of that has to do with freedom from [overreaching] governments, [and] a lot of that has to do with just the excitement of trying something new.”

Floating-city settlers may choose to migrate offshore for the chance to shape their political futures. The Institute’s seastead will strive for de facto autonomy.

“The major goal behind seasteading is to give humans more opportunity in governance,” Hencken says. “We have 7 billion people and only 190 countries, so there’s not a lot of choice. And there’s so many great ideas for how we could live together or run a government that are unavailable to be tested because there’s no space to test them.”

Retaining autonomy can prove tricky, even on the ocean. It makes more sense economically to locate a seastead close to shore rather than in international waters; but coastal proximity means dealing with local territorial jurisdiction.

“We’ve spent a good process evaluating coastal nations for ones that we think would be most susceptible to reaching a bilateral investment treaty with us,” Hencken says. “We also plan to build a city that is of symbiotic relationship to the neighbor.”

Some potential boons for coastal countries considering a seastead: new jobs and an influx of people and product at their ports. Plus, Hencken says, seasteading could provide solutions to oceanic pollution exacerbated by agricultural runoff.

“There’s a lot of great opportunities in aquaculture that would be associated with a floating city that could remediate the waters,” Hencken says. “So it would be commercial benefits, environmental benefits, and social benefits of allowing a seastead to be in their waters.”

To build a maritime metropolis, the Institute must navigate diplomatic waters and get plans in hand. Their current Indiegogo campaign aims to raise $20,000 to pay Dutch firm DeltaSync to transform vision into design; the Thiel foundation will match whatever the public puts in.

“Eventually our goal for the floating city project in the next year is to conclude this feasibility study where we say, this is what the design could be, this is what the design would cost, here’s a location that we’ve already begun negotiations with the government, and here’s hundreds of people that want to live there,” Hencken says. “And then we take that project and we go to investors and developers and we say this is a worthwhile investment.”

“The total cost of [the feasibility study for] our floating city project is going to be probably closer to a quarter million dollars,” he says.

Besides actual capital, The Institute looks to Indiegogo for another kind of validation.

“It’s one thing to say on a survey, ‘Yeah, I would pay $800 a square foot.’ It’s another thing to actually put down as little as $10 or up to thousands of dollars to show that you’re really committed,” Hencken says. “And that’s what we’re asking of the community right now, is to prove their interest in seasteading by putting a little skin in the game.”

From its Indiegogo campaign to online survey, the Institute’s seasteading movement has welcomed crowdsourced input. Importantly, what the masses donate to, there’s a chance they can participate in. Many a Trekkie will tell you space is the final frontier; but with seasteading becoming a viable alternative to land living in the not-so-distant future, pioneers could settle new frontiers a bit closer to home.

“There’s so much energy put towards trying to take humanity to space and it’s a great idea, and I hope it will be that we will get there. But I don’t think we’re going to get there in my lifetime, not to a point where the common person could afford to go there.” “Yet it’s something that’s very feasible to make it so the common people could go live on the ocean, and there’s a frontier right there waiting for us that’s unexplored, uninhabited.”

Unexplored and uninhabited for now.

“I do believe that this floating city project that we’re working on, with the Indiegogo campaign is going to catalyze the first bona fide seastead,” Hencken says. “I’d like to see us begin construction on it in the next few years; hopefully by 2020 we can see hundreds or thousands of people living there.”

“Digital businesses are powered by APIs and Apigee’s platform helps companies turn their digital assets into an engine for ongoing innovation and growth,” said Jin Lee, senior managing director, Accenture Mobility.  ”We are teaming with a market leader like Apigee because the application economy is creating unprecedented new opportunities in mobility and cloud, and our clients in every industry are aggressively deploying digital strategies to fuel their revenue growth and expand market share.”

The company will use the financing to expand globally as well continue to evolve its platform. The round brings the company’s total funding to $106 million.

Founded in 2005 originally as Sonoa Systems, Apigee specializes in a platform that simplifies APIs, the foundations for software applications. It takes its name from the name of its API management platform. Apigee’s software make it easier for companies to build their own apps, as well as provide the tools to measure the effectiveness and use of those apps. The products allow any company to link applications and relevant data to gain better control over the development and marketing of their apps.

“Mobile changes everything, and every business must have a comprehensive digital strategy that includes reaching customers and expanding through mobile apps,” said Chet Kapoor, Apigee CEO. “Apigee helps companies of all sizes deliver and manage the core elements of a connected mobile world: apps, data and APIs. We are in a market sweet spot, and this additional funding will help us quickly expand our product portfolio and international sales and marketing.”

Based in Palo Alto, Apigee features three product offerings: Apigee Enterprise, an API management platform; Apigee Insights, which provides data analytics; and Apigee API Exchange, an app ecosystem provider.

The company serves over 400 customers, including AT&T, Dell, Shell, Bechtel, OnStar and Marks & Spencer. Its products are used by 20 percent of the Fortune 100 and over 10 percent of the Global 100.

“Apigee helps even the largest organizations evolve their businesses to act more like agile Web companies,” commented Promod Haque, senior managing partner of NVP. “The company has impressive momentum, and we are confident that Apigee will continue its trajectory as our world becomes increasingly driven by data-rich apps as part of the ‘Internet of things.’”

RH: Tell me about GCON.

TS: GCON started out late 2011 when we had the idea of having a girls’ gaming convention in Saudi. The gaming conventions here are usually male-only, and we’re not allowed access, so we’re kind of left out from that community. And there’s a huge female gamer community here, [and] us being gamers we definitely wanted to be part of these events, so we decided to host our own event…We came up with the idea and went through with it and somehow, we actually pulled off the first girls-only gamers convention here.

RH: What challenges did you encounter, planning GCON?

TS: We had around 3,000 people attend the event last year. Actually, the numbers are a bit messy because there was a storm that day, and we kind of had to shut down for the first day. [Laughs] That was one of the challenges we faced. But it was around 3,000 female gamers. We had very little marketing budget, of course…but if I have to go back probably the main challenge was convincing the companies that there actually is a female gamer community. I remember sitting in meetings with Sony, Microsoft and just saying ‘Really, we’re here, we exist, this is a good idea. We invite you to participate, please take place in this event.’ That was probably the first obstacle we faced.

RH: If companies didn’t know you’re out there, do you feel the separation of female gamers is an awareness issue, or one more embedded in social and cultural pressures around girl gaming?

TS: I would say it’s a little bit of both. It’s not exactly very ladylike to be a gamer. For a lot of people it is like that, not for the new generation, but for older generations that’s one thing. Another thing is, it’s like you said…they don’t know that these gamers exist because they don’t see them at events, because the events are male-dominant. So they assume that they don’t exist.

RH: Was GCON a way for girl gamers to announce their presence?

TS: Yes, we basically wanted to say ‘We’re here, we exist, and we would like to be paid attention to.’ That was our main point from last year’s event. Everything in the event last year was free. It was just about saying you know, there is a society, it’s right there, and we’re just putting it on the map.

RH: Right off the bat, you were sponsored by some of the biggest names in tech: Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. How did you get their attention?

TS: Access was not easy at all. I used to work in telecom, so I have some contacts in that area. But literally, we had to go knocking on doors and emailing info emails, and emailing someone who knows someone who might know someone who can connect us to that person that we need to talk to; in order to actually get their access was a bit difficult. Especially that we were females and…wasn’t really taken seriously at the beginning. And having actually achieved the fact that we’d managed to get them, all three companies, under one roof was huge for us. Even though it was varying participations––some of them went really big, like Sony, they went all in; other companies were a bit more shy––still, the fact that they were all there under one roof was a huge achievement for us.

RH: Did you feel like acquiring those sponsors validated your idea?

TS: Yes actually. Following the first event, especially Sony, they’ve been a huge supporter for us…last year, with our help actually, they created the ladies gamers day, and that was the first time ever they’ve done that. And this year they went all in with us, collaborating and making us an official event for them. Instead of just having GCON and ladies gamers day, we’re now officially partners with Sony for the event. So that was a milestone for us. Other companies…well, some of them basically don’t have females on their agenda, yes? In terms of the demographic that they want to serve. But there has been some attention. We’ve definitely gotten the media attention and at least now that they actually acknowledge the community. And it’s not just the gamers community by the way, we’re heavily focused on the developers’ community as well.

RH: So GCON’s also an opportunity to network.

TS: That’s what we’re trying to do, but our objective is mainly to get them working in the industry professionally. We don’t just want them to have this as a hobby. We don’t just want them to be gamers who occasionally do fan art. We actually want them to take those talents and put them to good use and get them in the industry.

RH: Have you seen progress?

TS: So far, we’ve noticed that there’s an abundance of talent when it comes to art, and many of those are now being requested. We get requests from companies that, if we know any artists who’d be interested to work on projects…once they’ve actually started putting their art out there, through GCON, through other channels, they have been getting offers to actually start doing this professionally. That’s on the art side. On the development side the community is still pretty new. We’ve had the competition with Verso, Verso is a local business incubator for educational projects. We approached them since our theme for the development competition this year was education. So we approached them and they were very supportive actually. And they offered incubation for the winning projects to help them get the games going and publish them and so on.

RH: What drives you, personally, to pursue this passion?

TS: I wanted to have these opportunities presented for me, and now that I found myself in a place where I had the ability to make them available for myself and for others––I’m a developer as well. I began developing last year. I used to be a CS student and really didn’t know what to do with a CS degree, at some point. It’s like, do I work as a programmer or do I just get into marketing like everyone else does? So having these opportunities available for me would have been a great help at that time. So I feel that if I can make them available for me and other people as well, then, yeah, it’s worth it.

RH: What future developments do you hope to see in your region and sector?

TS: Right now, what we’re working towards is seeing the first game developed by a woman published locally. We haven’t had that yet, so that’s our mission. Whether it’s someone from our team or ourselves personally or one of the developers that we’ve been working with––we need a success story, and that’s what we’re focusing on for the next year. Hopefully after that we would be able to expand a little bit around the Middle East. We’re focused on Saudi Arabia for now as we’re based here, but we’re hoping to expand a little bit and maybe take the Saudi experience and customize it and share it around and, different countries where we see this pattern could actually work.

RH: In a far-off future, do you see GCON going co-ed?

TS: I don’t see that happening in Arabia. I mean we see them around, you’ve seen them in Dubai, you’ve seen them in Jordan, and the fact that the community––it’s not really about having an all-female event, it’s just more about having a more specialized event that focuses on women. That’s it, really. But I don’t see it happening in Arabia any time soon.

RH: Is that something coming from GCON, or do you see that as specific to the Saudi Arabian culture around tech and gaming?

TS: No, it’s very cultural, not just gaming. It’s a matter of, it’s what the general preference here. And honestly, it’s working for our advantage.

The enthusiasts behind the campaign are fundraising to produce a wireless temperature controller, which they say will update brewing tech for the smartphone era.

DIY beer buffs themselves, the brains behind BrewBit (Misha Manulis, Brian Starnes and Nick Hebner) set out to create their dream controller. “We’re all huge nerds so we kind of dove in headfirst,” Hebner said. “We were really interested in learning the technical aspects of brewing.”

Their tool is capable of both monitoring and regulating temperature over the Internet. Users can babysit their beer from pretty much anywhere, as all that’s necessary to make remote modifications is web access. Homebrewers can also choose to pre-schedule temperature changes via beer profiles. “There’s certain processes in brewing [where] you want to hold special temperatures for certain durations and then change,” Hebner says. “[Before, there was] a timer running on your watch and when the alarm goes off you run over and turn up your burners. It’s a very manual process even if you have temperature controllers.”

With the Model-T, “you can tell it up front, ‘I want you to hold 135 for 10 minutes,’” Hebner says. “That’s one of the cool things that relieved a lot of stress on the brew day.”

The controller will also keep users posted on how their beer’s doing––even when they’re doing other things.

“Then of course there’s the connected aspect,” he says. “If you’re using it to control your fermentation, you can check on it when you’re bored at work. If you forget to change the temperature, you can command it to change temperature over the Internet.”

By nature open source, the Model-T’s possible functionalities are subject to users’ whims. Manulis says they’ve been asked about adapting it to other purposes, like barbecuing. Because of its potential, the BrewBit team considered marketing the Model-T based on its flexibility, but decided to focus on its use to brewers.

And though California’s known for its VC scene, BrewBit stresses the project’s more about passion than profits.

“It’s a huge passion for us,” Manulis says. “We’re not going after raising gobs of money. We want to share this with the rest of the brewing community.”

“We’re really focused on, from the startup perspective, this is helping us build the product that we want,” he says.

So far, its seems the product they want suits prospective customers fine.

“It’s been good, we’ve gotten a bunch of messages from people that are incredibly excited about it and can’t wait to get theirs,” Manulis says.

The Model-T Kickstarter campaign launched July 15 and will conclude August 17. Right now, it’s up over $37,000, with about $43,000 left to go. Funding came quickly in the beginning, but the stream has slowed down. Though Hebner says he thinks their daily numbers are just about where they need to be to acquire the necessary funding, he’s still worried.

“We’re just biting our fingernails,” he says.

For folks in the Western Hemisphere who might not know, Redmart’s a Singaporean e-commerce portal where users shop for everyday goods of the nonperishable variety. They’ve partnered with monster brands like Coca-Cola, Unilever and L’Oreal to put 5,000 products on digital shelves; that number will grow to 7,000 soon. While not profitable yet, they draw 4,000 active monthly users and bring home around $500,000 SGD a month.

Redmart’s Series A funding last week saw a substantial (and undisclosed) investment by Garena founder and CEO Forrest Li. The round, now closed, brought total funding behind Redmart to $4.6 million USD.

For Singaporean companies, later funding rounds prove crucial to viability. Through grants and incubator programs, Singapore’s government goes out of its way to incentivize entrepreneurship. If a company’s idea is sound, getting seed money’s easy––but finding backers for later rounds is not. With the venture capital scene less developed and firms more risk-averse, fledgling companies turn instead to angel and individual investors for support.

“You get to Series A where you need a couple  million dollars and that’s where it becomes difficult. I’d say roughly speaking they, the VCs in the immediate area aren’t as experienced,” says Roger Egan, CEO and founder of Redmart. “What we ended up doing is going to an entrepreneur because a lot of the VCs here lack operational experience with founding their own companies.”

Big names jump out from Redmart’s list of backers, including Skype co-founder Toivo Annus (who has invested three times) and Southeast Asian gaming giant Forrest Li. “[Annus] introduced us to Forrest Li [of Garena], which is the largest online gaming company––one of the largest Internet companies, period, in Southeast Asia,” Egan says. “He said, ‘Forrest, you should take a look at this deal.’”

For Redmart, though, big names don’t necessarily mean big numbers. Instead, Egan preaches financial restraint, which extends to his philosophy on fundraising. “We’re careful to raise only the capital we need in each round. While that may be a little risky––because what if the fundraising environment changes––we feel that when you have more money you spend more money,” he says. “We try to put ourselves under a little more pressure, which sounds insane. We think that helps us come up with the most efficient way of operating.”

Streamlining costs means perfecting logistics, which make or break e-commerce ventures. Redmart’s entire concept rides or dies on coordination. They offer free delivery on orders exceeding $75 SGD, and 95 percent do. To keep their market advantage and position as the convenient alternative to grocery shopping, their product deliveries much be cheap, quick, reliable, and accurate. To ensure this, Redmart must know its market, with its particular whims and obstacles, like the back of its hand––which takes a while.

“The last thing you want to do is, before you’ve developed your system and processes and your internal operations and technology, go and try to do that and build it from scratch again in another country, diverting your attention from getting it right here and possibly risking both,” says Egan.

Redmart’s business model practically demands they test and perfect it on small markets first. And while some would argue Redmart could take their platform and plant it in anywhere, there are particular reasons it’s succeeding in Singapore, making the island city the perfect place for Redmart to spend its early years. And right now, there’s no real rush to expand past its borders.

As an insulated market, Singapore’s ideal for application of what Egan calls the Blue Ocean Strategy. “We see Singapore as a blue ocean,” says Egan. “Because people think it’s small and they have bigger cities to go after, especially big guys, it actually creates an opportunity that’s pretty unique for a startup to develop.” Promoted by two INSEAD professors, the strategy sings the praises of open markets where businesses can grow undisputed by competitors.

Specifically, though, Singapore has a great reputation for being pro-business, as well as a population suited to Redmart’s goals. According to World Bank’s “Doing Business,” it’s 2013’s easiest place to do business (a title they’ve held for a few years now). “There’s a lot of reasons why this city is the perfect place to get started and test and get your service right,” says Egan. “It’s small, it’s densely populated, it has great infrastructure, it’s very business-friendly, very easy to start a company, [the] government supports startups in so many ways.”

Plus, small is a relative term. “For our market, it’s not that small,” Egan says. “We always tell people that groceries and everyday essentials, everyone’s a potential buyer. It’s a $5.2 billion market.”

“[You can build a] couple-hundred million dollar business pretty easily here, and you don’t have to face Amazon and people like Fresh Direct and Tesco. It’s much more of a wide open playing field,” he continues. “So thats why we think there’s plenty of potential here, another reason why we’re not so keen on going out too quickly.”

Soon, though, Redmart will expand. They’ll head to new cities where Egan says they’ll try to find leaders that double as locals. They’re also contemplating next frontier: fresh food delivery.

“[We believe] you’re only going to be as good as your greatest challenges,” Egan says. “Other product categories are one thing, and geographical expansion, for sure we see a lot of opportunity. It’s still kind of like the Wild West here in South Asia.”

Adding to the pros: Locket CEO Yunha Kim promises the Android app won’t just make mobile ads less annoying––it’ll make them entertaining.

“What we’re trying to do is change how mobile advertising works,” she says. “We want to make sure that every single ad we put out there is enjoyable, that they’re aesthetically pleasing.”

Beautiful or not, monetized mobile ads on lockscreens could raise a lot of dough for consumers. Kim says people look at their lockscreens 150 times a day. Multiplied by the million Android users out there, that’s a lot of screentime-turned-dollars-and-cents.

Locket’s model could potentially change the mobile ad game, as it rewards customers for their attention like no other company does, despite past attempts to harness the power of the platform. Both angel investors and Great Oaks Venture Capital took notice. Kim says it took three business days to acquire funding from the latter, who pumped in $500,000 in April. “We went in to pitch [and] we heard back in 24 hours,” Kim says.

Though Great Oaks takes a hands-off approach, Kim notes the VC firm has provided more than just financial support.

“We are a team of six, including myself. Yesterday we launched and we were getting 10,000 users downloading within a few hours and we really needed help. I called them up at one in the morning saying, ‘We are getting too many emails, we don’t know how to respond,’” Kim says.

 “He responded saying, ‘How many interns did you need?’” she says.

A quickly-increasing user base will do nothing but boost Locket’s growth goals, which also involve fundraising and working with more advertisers. Right now, users get a penny per ad view and can only earn 3 cents an hour; but Kim says these numbers might not stick. The app’s also planning to give customers choice in redeeming their accumulated change. Currently, they can cash in anything they’ve racked up past the $10 mark via Paypal, but in the future, Kim sees people donating to charity, purchasing gift cards and paying down their phone bills.

Importantly, though, Kim says Locket’s not only about making money. Instead, her goals for the mobile ad world are more idealistic.

“The beauty of…high quality print ads has been lost in mobile advertising and we want to bring that back,” she says. “We don’t want users to be just sitting there and unlocking their phones to get the money. We want them to be able to enjoy the ads.”

When ads appear on lock screens, users can choose by swiping left or right whether to engage or not. With participation pretty much optional across the app, Locket may succeed in making advertising less annoying to some consumers. But if you find yourself bummed by overexposure to ads, remember you’ve only got yourself to thank––and with Locket, three cents more than you had a second ago.

Images provided by Yunha Kim of Locket

“Proven is changing the way people apply and experience the job hunt, making it easier and more accessible by unchaining job seekers from their computers,” writes CEO and Proven co-founder Pablo Fuentes in an email.

Loosening the shackles binding people to their desktops lets users apply for jobs pretty much anytime, anywhere. That’s especially helpful when getting to a listing first could mean a leg up.

“Most people, especially millennials, are never further than about 5 feet from their phones and they can use this to their advantage,” Fuentes writes. “From a recent study we conducted, we found that people that applied for a new job listing within the first day of it being listed were 70% more likely to be noticed by recruiters and they also received more positive responses as well.”

Applying to jobs via mobile makes the process flexible, convenient and almost pleasant (it is still job hunting, after all). Résumés are reachable via email then download code, and cover letters get copy-pasted into the app. Otherwise you can just write new ones in Proven itself; there’s even a résumé template.

The whole thing takes a very few minutes and screen taps if you’re already set on content, though some listings do require applicants jump through additional hoops. The short time it takes to apply is perfect for users casting a wide net.

“In this job market, people have to apply for more jobs and this especially applies to millennials trying to land their first job,” Fuentes writes. “Proven makes it easier to not only monitor new postings, but also create a resume and apply right away so millennials can be that much closer to being first in line to be considered for an open position.”

Earlier this week, the 2009 startup received an extra push from investors by way of $1 million in seed funding. Capital behind Proven now totals $3.8 million, with Andreessen Horowitz, Kapor Capital, Founder Collective, Greylock Partners, and other angels contributing to Wednesday’s million-dollar round.

“Our goal is to continuously improve the job hunting experience and today’s funding bump takes us so much closer to achieving just that,” Fuentes writes. “The funding will help us further develop our mobile and backend technology, expand the platform and broaden our growing scope of partners.”