How Two College Students Raised $5.1 Million to Build an AI Social Network Inside iMessage

The thought that the next major social network may already be installed on your phone, sandwiched between a DoorDash delivery update and a text from your mother, is subtly humorous. Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow, two Yale seniors, founded Series, a startup that recently closed a $5.1 million pre-seed round to develop an AI-powered networking layer that resides inside iMessage.

There is no app to download. There is no feed to browse. It’s just a phone number you text and a supposedly helpful conversation.

The list of investors reads like a little procession of competent individuals. Iqram Magdon-Ismail, who contributed to the creation of Venmo when no one understood the purpose of sending money over the phone. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. GPTZero’s Edward Tian. The bigger checks are being written by Pear VC. This type of cap table implies that the wager here isn’t actually about iMessage at all, but rather about how social products will develop in a world where consumers are increasingly choosing to converse with chatbots rather than learn yet another interface.

The mechanics are simple and, in a sense, antiquated. The AI responds with what the founders refer to as “shares”—carousels of ten individuals with similar goals—when you text the Series number and describe who you are and who you would like to meet. A private thread within the same chat opens when you press and hold a photo. No one gives out a phone number. No one creates a profile. It’s networking at its most basic level, which is likely why the early retention figures are what they are. At day thirty, 82% of users were still active, which is a significant percentage. If you believe the comparison, it’s superior to what Facebook published during its dorm-room days.

One of those origin stories that seems made up in hindsight is how Johnson and Hargrow got here. When they first started their podcast at the Yale Entrepreneurial Society as freshmen, they interviewed founders and asked the kind of sincere questions you ask before you’ve learned to be cynical. In the midst of all of that, they became aware of how frequently the individuals they looked up to claimed that a single kind introduction had altered their course. The company’s initial iteration attempted to bottle that. Before the iMessage concept became popular, it took about a year of iterations.

A late-night LinkedIn video was the source of their fundraising break. According to Johnson, the trailer was written at one in the morning, shot before dawn, and uploaded by the middle of the afternoon. They received their first check two days later. The timing certainly didn’t hurt, but it’s possible that the founders’ instinct for momentum was more effective than the video. Speaking with people in this segment of the consumer AI scene gives me the impression that a round can still be won with the correct thirty seconds of video.

While Johnson and Hargrow complete their degrees, Series will remain on the East Coast and operate out of an office in Chelsea. They both continue to commute from New Haven, which sounds exhausting and most likely is. Johnson oversees an eight-person team, studies economics and computer science, and makes sure the schedule works. It’s really unclear if the company outperforms rivals like Boardy AI or if the iMessage strategy works once Apple detects the traffic. However, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that the most intriguing consumer software being developed at the moment frequently appears in locations where you already spend time, requires very little of you, and somehow ends up with a venture round attached.