Yale Students Raise $3M in 14 Days to Build Series, the Anti-Facebook
Social networking has become synonymous with chasing likes, followers, and vanity metrics – a system that began with Facebook in 2004 and has trained an entire generation to equate self-worth with numbers. Today, Series announces the launch of its AI-powered social platform that’s reinventing how college students connect, securing $3M in pre-seed funding to create a network built on meaningful relationships
The team raised $3M in funding for its pre-seed round led by Parable (former a16z investor, Anne Lee Skates) with participation from Pear VC, Tim Draper’s DGB.VC, 47th Street (Jaren Glover, ex-Robinhood), Radicle Impact, Uncommon Projects, and notable angels including the CEO of Reddit (Steve Huffman), the founder of GPTZero (Edward Tian), and others.
The funding journey reads like a startup fairy tale: just two weeks ago, co-founder Nathaneo Johnson posted a trailer on LinkedIn about Series that went viral in the college entrepreneurial community. After an initial Zoom call with Anne Lee Skates (who started her fund after leaving a16z), Johnson and co-founder Sean Hargrow – both juniors at Yale – immediately flew to Silicon Valley to begin fundraising. What happened next defied conventional startup timelines for college founders: they closed their round in just 14 days.
Series is the first networking platform that uses AI Friends to make warm, double opt-in introductions across different networks. These AI Friends operate directly in iMessage and become personalized towards each user, making intros autonomously or on demand. Unlike existing platforms, Series creates connections only when there’s mutual value on both sides – eliminating the biases perpetuated by follower counts and engagement metrics. The platform requires a .edu email to join, creating a trusted ecosystem where students text their AI Friend about themselves and who they know, receiving a minimalist profile showcasing their warm network.
“The problem of quantifying value online isn’t a recent development – it started with Facebook back in ’04. Not to say these platforms don’t build great communities, but they embody the narrative that online metrics equate to real world value” said Nathaneo Johnson, co-founder & CEO of Series. “We’re 6’5”, Black, and technical – a direct foil to the Harvard story. And that difference is the reason Series tells a new story of how people connect online.”
Series’ revolutionary approach addresses a fundamental issue in modern social networking: people rely on biased guesswork and social proof to decide whom to connect with, and over time, making connections feels like charity. The company’s solution is an AI system that intelligently identifies potential matches based on genuine mutual benefit – no likes, followers, or vanity metrics – just smart, agentic networking where much of Gen Z already lives: iMessage.
The company’s journey began with The Founder Series Podcast, where founders Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow interviewed Yale entrepreneurs, accumulating over 500k views. This evolved into a viral web chatbot that facilitated curated introductions based on mutual value, gaining immediate traction at Yale and Princeton. With the official launch of Series in 2025, the platform has already recorded over 32,000 messages sent and received by AI Friends.
The platform’s ability to create natural human connections through AI has already resonated with early users: “I forgot it (the AI friend) wasn’t a real person. That was until I connected to a real person in the form of a minimalist profile my AI Friend (Oliver) had texted me. It was awesome,” reported Rich Zou, a student at Northeastern who uses Series for hosting hackathons.
“Once we capture the college entrepreneurial market, we’ll expand to finance, dating, education, health, and more. All of these fields in the student space rely on trust, access, and social capital,” explained Johnson. “Our long-term vision is to become the largest and most accessible warm network for just about anything – one billion AI Friends in the next decade. Social connection is broken; we’re rebuilding it with AI that acts like a well-connected friend in your pocket making connections to who you need, when you need, IRL.”
