Courtesy of Series

Two Yale College juniors, Sean Hargrow ’26 and Nathaneo Johnson ’26, have raised $3.1 million to launch Series, an AI-powered platform that curates connections between users based on their needs. 

The two met at the Yale Entrepreneurial Society in their freshman year, hosting a podcast called “The Founder Series” where they interviewed Yale startup owners about their entrepreneurial journeys and bonded over their shared experiences as Black students in the Ivy League. Now, they are focused on democratizing access to social networks and changing perceptions of entrepreneurship by launching their own startup.

“A lot of the founders we spoke to seemed to base their success on an ‘engineering of luck’. They would say a friend of a friend was the reason I was able to build this — or an uncle’s relative,” said Johnson. “For us, that wasn’t feasible, which led us to build Series.” 

Users joining the Series network are able to make requests for support from other users whether it be in entrepreneurship or business. The request is made to an AI-powered agent which then scours the network to introduce the user to potential members of value. The $3.1 million round is led by the venture firm Parable, with participation from Pear VC, DGB.VC, 47th Street, Radicle Impact and Uncommon Projects. The product has also attracted business angel investors such as Steve Huffman, the CEO of Redditt, and Edward Tian, a founder at GPTZero.

When they arrived on campus, Hargrow said they quickly realized there weren’t many people who looked like them. As tall Black men, they felt others often assumed they must be athletes, playing basketball or football at Yale.  

While the two bonded over their shared background, they also had different paths to their startup. 

Johnson stated that he “always knew” he wanted to start a business. In high school, he engineered cube satellites, and built a social app the summer before college called Mix26 to help students navigate social events during freshman orientation.

Hargrow, on the other hand, said that his passion throughout high school was basketball. During his senior year, he received scholarships to schools such as Boston University, but when Yale accepted him on a full ride, he ultimately decided to leave athletics behind.

“When I joined the Yale Entrepreneurial Society, suddenly the idea of a venture became a lot more viable,” Hargrow said. “I met more people, including Nathaneo. We did a lot of fun stuff our first year with the club, then said, ‘Can we do more?’”

Johnson said that one of the greatest challenges of the startup process has been overcoming the initial bias and public perception regarding how he and Hargrow looked and presented themselves differently. 

Hargrow also noted the difficulties of a school culture where freshmen are pressured to join organizations such as Yale Student Investment Group or Yale Undergraduate Consulting Group because “that’s what you’re supposed to do.” 

“Pursuing things that aren’t as popular in the Yale realm closed some doors on campus or got me certain perceptions I didn’t necessarily want,” said Hargrow. “I didn’t rush or have those experiences with my class, so that also kind of put me in a box of being lonely my first year. These things were a challenge, but also a blessing because they allowed me to see what’s important and find my tribe.”

The two will soon be embarking on a “college tour” at schools such as Stanford, MIT, Rutgers and UCI to spread their platform and gather a community of student startups to create a “new face of entrepreneurship.”

The founders hope that their business will inspire younger entrepreneurs, particularly those in the Black community. 

“When I was growing up, it was very hard to relate to people who had accomplished the things I wanted to do,” said Johnson. “We’re setting the records at Yale, and we just happen to be Black. But it was this step that was needed to show that in the startup space, on this campus, people who look like us can be entrepreneurs.”

Albert Yang ’26, who co-founded BullMont, a student venture studio, with Johnson in 2023, said that he appreciates the two’s willingness to “stand out and do something unconventional” and build a product that “disrupts,” no matter what the pushback might be.

“Hopefully in the next few decades, we’ll be like 50 or something and we’ll be looking back and saying Harvard did it wrong in ’04, and Yale did it right in 2025,” said Hargrow, referring to Facebook’s founding on Harvard’s campus. 

Readers can access Series at series.so.