Series, a social networking app built entirely within iMessage, announced a $5.1 million pre-seed funding round in April 2026. The round drew investors including Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Pear VC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and GPTZero founder Edward Tian.
The company was founded in early 2025 by Yale seniors Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow. Johnson, who studies computer science and economics, serves as CEO. Hargrow studied neuroscience. Both remain enrolled at Yale while running the company, making frequent commutes from New Haven, Connecticut, to their office in Chelsea, New York.
Series works by having users text a dedicated phone number — Series AI — on iMessage. Users describe who they are and who they want to connect with. The AI responds with “shares,” a carousel of 10 profile cards from other users seeking similar connections. Users can initiate a private conversation directly within the Series AI chat without exchanging personal phone numbers.
Johnson and Hargrow met during their freshman year at the Yale Entrepreneurial Society, where they co-hosted a podcast interviewing founders and executives. Those conversations, Johnson said, led them to recognize “the power of warm connections,” which became the thesis behind Series. The two began building the company the summer after their freshman year, going through multiple iterations before landing on the current concept roughly a year after their first prototype. They began fundraising in March 2025 and have since built a team of eight.
The platform started on college campuses and has since expanded beyond its student base, targeting Gen Z users and professionals. Johnson said most users connect for business reasons, though dating and friend-finding are also common use cases. Series is currently active across more than 750 campuses, and the company reports a 30-day user retention rate of 82%, which Johnson compared favorably to early Facebook benchmarks.
Johnson views the platform as part of a broader shift from graphical user interfaces to conversational ones — a transition he described as analogous to moving from Google search to tools like ChatGPT. Series positions itself as a social networking platform rather than an AI app, and counts Boardy AI among others operating in the AI-assisted networking space.
The fresh capital will be used to hire engineers and expand product capabilities. The company plans to remain on the East Coast after Johnson and Hargrow graduate, citing a strong existing network among Ivy League and East Coast schools and a preference for New York’s “Silicon Alley” over Silicon Valley.
Source: TechCrunch