They’re building a whole new world!
At just 21 years old, Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow aren’t just thinking outside the box—they’re building a whole new one. The two Yale juniors recently raised $3 million in just 14 days to launch Series, an AI-powered networking platform that challenges everything we think we know about social media, Entrepreneur reports. Dubbed the “anti-Facebook,” Series isn’t about likes or followers. It’s about forging meaningful connections with people who can actually change your life.
And for these young Black founders, this isn’t just tech. It’s testimony.
“We’re 6’5”, Black and technical—a direct foil to the Harvard story,” Johnson says, referencing the genesis of Facebook. “And that difference is the reason Series tells a new story of how people connect online.”
That story started with a simple but powerful question: What if AI could help engineer luck?
After hosting The Founder Series podcast and interviewing dozens of entrepreneurs, Johnson and Hargrow noticed a trend: success often came down to one thing—being in the right place at the right time, with the right introduction. But what if that kind of “luck” could be built into the system?
Enter Series. Instead of relying on cold outreach or social clout, users text their AI-powered “friend” the kind of connection they’re looking for—a mentor, investor, cofounder, even a new friend—and that AI gets to work, searching the Series network for a match.
Unlike traditional platforms that reward performative posts and picture-perfect personas, Series flips the script. It’s not about how polished your profile looks—it’s about who you really are and who you need in your life right now.
“Social media is great for broadcasting, but it doesn’t necessarily help you meet the right people at the right time,” Johnson says. Series is designed to do exactly that.
But the journey wasn’t all seamless. The co-founders started with cold emails and rejections. Then came the breakthrough. A chance connection led to Anne Lee Skates, a respected Bay Area investor. A spontaneous flight and dinner later, she became their lead investor. That dinner, Hargrow says, was a “million-dollar dinner—quite literally.”
The $3 million fundraising whirlwind that followed wasn’t just about smart tech—it was about confidence, community, and purpose. Johnson, a computer science and economics major from Irvine, California, and Hargrow, a neuroscience major and former athlete from Queens, New York, found common ground at Yale—and tapped into the university’s ecosystem to build something bigger than themselves.
Their vision is radical in its simplicity: help people find real relationships in a world overrun with curated noise.
“We’re not trying to replace real-world relationships—we’re trying to make it easier for people to find the right relationships in the first place,” Hargrow says.
And as two Black founders making waves in a space that hasn’t historically welcomed people who look like them, their impact runs deeper than venture capital or tech innovation; it’s equally about representation in the entrepreneurial landscape.
“When I was younger, I didn’t see a lot of people who I could look up to because they didn’t look like me or build what I was building,” Johnson says. “I can see my childhood self looking up to me now.”
In a world that’s increasingly digital, Series is here to remind us that connection—real connection—will always be human.
Cover photo: 21-Year-Old Yale Juniors Raise $3M in 14 Days for New AI-Powered Social Media App ‘Series’/Photo credit: Series/Entrepreneur