Two college kids get $5.1 million to build an AI social network in iMessage

Series, an online social networking app, announced that it raised $5.1 million, with investors including Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Pear VC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and GPTZero founder Edward Tian. The company was founded early last year by Yale students Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow, both still seniors at the university.

Series sees itself as a next-generation social media platform, rather than an AI software, and bills itself as one of the first to use iMessage, Johnson, the CEO, told TechCrunch.

Users enter a phone number (Series AI) on iMessage, specifying who they are and who they want to contact. From there, Series AI sends messages to the user, offering so-called “sections” – or a carousel of 10 images that one can easily scroll through – posts from other people who also use Series AI looking to connect with the same cause. Each carousel card includes a picture of a person and their inquiry, and users can press and hold the carousel picture to start a private conversation with another user in Series AI chat, without sharing their number.

Johnson, who studies computer science and economics, is an innovator in a unique era in technology history, marked by rapid advances in AI and more venture capital than ever before. He’s part of the next generation of young startups whose businesses and ideas are AI-first since their inception, which marketers say gives young startups a lead over incumbents and older startups trying to catch up.

He sees the industry shifting more and more from a user interface to a social interface, such as from Google search to ChatGPT, “where you’re looking in libraries and clicking on websites versus interacting with AI or something to quickly identify what you want.”

Johnson and Hargrow met while working on a podcast during their freshman year at the Yale Entrepreneurial Society. Johnson said he used to interview founders and CEOs to learn about successful businesses, and through those conversations, he “realized the power of emotional connection.”

“Then we started our freshman summer to launch an independent business at the club and put together a company around the same concept, using AI as an interactive guide,” Johnson said. He and Hargrow, who studied neuroscience at Yale, went through what is now the Series. After arriving at an idea they liked, just over a year after their first photo, they started fundraising in March 2025, creating a team of eight people this time.

Johnson and his team decided to create a popular LinkedIn video about the launch of the Series. “We came up with the idea for the trailer at 1 a.m. last night, stayed up all night to shoot the video and put it on at 3 p.m. the same day,” Johnson said. Two days later, they met their first investor.

The platform recently opened up beyond its college students but still wants to target Gen Z and professionals. Most people use it for business purposes, Johnson said, although he has seen others use it for dating or dating. “Students use the Series in more than 750 schools,” he said. “Users on Series remain 82% until Day 30, higher than when Facebook started.”

Others in this sites include Boardy AI, which also uses AI to power network startups.

Series’ new headquarters will be used to hire more engineers and expand product capabilities. After graduation, the company will be located on the East Coast, and is already working in an office in Chelsea, New York (he makes a two-hour trip from New Haven, Connecticut, where Yale is located, to New York often, Johnson said).

“We have created the first network of the Series between the Ivy League and clearly, the schools on the East Coast. Also, we have a strong faith in Silicon Alley,” Johnson said of the decision to stay in the East, comparing it to the culture of young entrepreneurs choosing New York over Silicon Valley.

In particular, he is Hargrow he didn’t drop out of college. Johnson said a good day is when everything goes well, but a bad day can be when he has tests and a lot of paperwork to write while running the team. He didn’t drop out of school, he said, because he felt he had time to study and run a company. It seems he was right.

“Your extra time that you don’t have to do can be used to show what you do have to do,” he said. “People are often afraid to use their extra time.”