Two college kids raise $5.1 million to build an AI social network on iMessage

Series, a social networking app, announced that it has raised a pre-seed round of $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 seniors at the university.

The series sees itself as a next-generation social networking platform, rather than an AI application, and hails itself as one of the first to work entirely through iMessage, Johnson, the CEO, told TechCrunch.

Users text a phone number (Series AI) in iMessage, explaining who they are and who they want to connect with. From there, Series AI sends messages to the user, offering what it calls “notifications” — or an easy-to-swipe carousel of 10 images — of posts from other people also using Series AI who want to connect for a similar reason. Each carousel card includes a person’s photo and their question, and users can long-press the carousel photo to start a private conversation with another user on Series AI chat, without sharing their personal number.

Johnson, who is studying computer science and economics, is founding at a unique time in tech history, marked by rapid advances in artificial intelligence and more money from investors than ever before. They’re part of the next generation of young founders whose businesses and mindsets are AI-first from the ground up, which investors say gives young founders an edge over established founders and older founders trying to pivot and catch up.

He sees the industry undergoing a huge technological shift from user interfaces to conversational interfaces, such as from Google Search to ChatGPT, “where you’re used to scrolling through libraries and clicking on websites instead of talking to an AI or something to quickly identify what you’re looking for.”

Johnson and Hargrow met while working on a podcast their freshman year at the Yale Entrepreneurial Society. Johnson said they used to interview founders and CEOs to gain insights into building a successful business, and through those conversations they “realized the power of warm connections.”

“We then moved on in the summer of our freshman year to start a business independent of the club and incorporate a company around the same thesis, using artificial intelligence as a warm connection facilitator,” Johnson said. He and Hargrow, who studied neuroscience at Yale, went through multiple iterations of what is now the Series. When they landed on an idea they liked, about a year after their first prototype, they began fundraising for it in March 2025, building a team of eight in the process.

Johnson and his team decided to do a LinkedIn video that is now viral about the release of the series. “We came up with the idea for the trailer at 1 in the morning the night before, stayed up to shoot the video, and released it at 3 in the afternoon the same day,” Johnson said. Two days later, they met their first investor.

The platform recently opened up beyond its college-student base, but still targets Gen Z and professionals. Most people use it for business, Johnson said, though they’ve seen others use it for dating or to find friends. “Students use Series on more than 750 campuses,” he said. “Activated users on Series retain 82% through Day 30, higher than Facebook’s early benchmark.”

Others in this space include Boardy AI, which also uses AI to promote network admissions.

The new series capital will be used to hire more engineers and expand the product’s capabilities. After she graduates, the company will remain on the East Coast and already works out of an office in Chelsea, New York (they make the two-hour commute from New Haven, Connecticut, where Yale is located, to New York often, Johnson said).

“We’ve built an initial network for the Series among the Ivy League and primarily, East Coast schools. We also have a strong belief in Silicon Alley,” Johnson said of the decision to stay east, matching a trend of young consumer founders choosing New York over Silicon Valley.

Notably, he and Hargrow haven’t dropped out of college. Johnson said a good day is one when everything is running smoothly, but a bad day can be one when he has a ton of tests and essays to write while also balancing the running of a team. He didn’t quit, he said, because he felt he had time to both study and run a company. Looks like he was right.

“Your extra time outside of your supposed obligation can be used to spark what you really want to do,” he said. “People are often so afraid to use their extra time.”