MIT Graduate Program in Comparative Media Studies

Studying Media and Making Media

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Start-up funding news: Faculty and alum secure combined $2.25 million

The Hearby homepage showing live concert information as a list and detailed map

Professor Ian Condry and CMS alum Han Su recently announced funding rounds for their respective start-ups.

Condry is co-founder of Hearby.com, which secured a new $1.5 million from Namier Capital and Simon Murdoch. With other co-founder Gary Halliwell, Hearby.com “uniquely combines Anthropology and Big Data to create an exciting new platform for discovering local live music.”

The Hearby homepage listing live events, along with a map detailing the events' locations.
The Hearby.com homepage
Photo of Han Su

Meanwhile, CMS graduate program alum Han Su, ’20, recently received an A-round investment from Beijing-based venture capital firm ZhenFund to support work on Privoce.com​ to builds personal cloud computing tools to enhance data ownership and data interoperability, particularly for netizens looking to improve participatory representation:

With Privoce tools, you will have your personal app. You can choose the features to compose your own app and invite your friends to use the same feature—e.g., to co-browse any website with your partner, to invite your friends to  a shared social RSS feed that will share what YouTube videos and NYT articles you liked, or to form a shared eventsfeed with your CMS cohort to see what public events people are participating. The vision of Privoce is to shatter the functionalities of centralized platforms with personal computing tools. Privoce provides the services in a Function as a Service (FaaS) manner, through which netizens become consumers who purchase the personal storage space and computing services. The Privoce team includes a core team and an open-source team with contributors across the globe—the US, Brazil, China,  and Tanzania.

About Andrew Whitacre

Andrew directs the communications efforts for CMS/W and its research groups. A native of Washington, D.C., he holds a degree in communication from Wake Forest University, with a minor in humanities, as well as an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College.

His work includes drawing up and executing strategic communications plans, with projects including website design, social media management and training, press outreach, product launches, fundraising campaign support, and event promotions.