21-Year-Old Yale Founder Raises $3.1M in 14 Days

A 21-year-old Yale junior just raised $3.1 million in two weeks. But here's what makes this story truly remarkable: Nathaneo Johnson and his co-founder didn't just break fundraising records—they shattered the assumption that Ivy League students need to choose between academic success and entrepreneurial ambition.

Johnson is the CEO and co-founder of Series, an AI social network that uses artificial intelligence to make warm introductions via iMessage. The company has already processed around $250,000 in message volume and just closed what's now the largest funding round of any current Ivy League startup.

In this interview, Johnson reveals the unconventional strategies behind Series' viral growth, why he's building an intern house that's generating massive buzz, and how two students proved that being controversial—with the right facts—can be your biggest competitive advantage.

Nathaneo: Hey, I'm Nathaniel Johnson. I'm the co-founder and CEO here at Series. I'm 21 years old. I'm currently a junior at Yale University studying computer science and economics. I love playing basketball on the side, of course. I'm also powerlifting, but most importantly, startups, which is why I'm here.

Series is the first AI social network. We're using AI friends to make warm introductions via iMessage to help you meet new people based on a want or need you have. For message count, I think we're at around $250,000 which is really exciting to see. We raised $3.1 million in 14 days, which is now the largest round of any startup that is currently in the Ivy League.

Nathaneo: Series was honestly a really interesting story. It actually started when Shawn, my co-founder, and I started a podcast our freshman year at Yale interviewing founders and CEOs from 23andMe to Genius Lyrics to Runway. We were very curious on how exactly they used their own warm network to build successful businesses.

We know how hard it is to get access to the right people, especially for professional reasons, whether that is raising capital or getting a new job. I'd imagine that anyone who goes to a tier 3 IB internship, there's definitely 5 people that were probably just equal if not better of a candidate that didn't make it to a college internship that aren't able to have dad's golf buddy to get them into the IB internship.

Connections, but more importantly perceived value is something that usually requires a warm network to be able to get into. This is a problem that we need to be able to help solve and that can be solved through essentially using agentic matchmaking to make those connections more accessible.

Nathaneo: What happened is we ended up experimenting with AI. I come from a CS background and was able to initially construct this early version chatbot that used emails to make warm intros. We blasted that to Yale's email list, to Princeton I think a day later, and it kind of had some sort of virality—kind of blew up within that student community.

People were using it for startup ideas, art gallery ideas, kind of a specific range mainly for professional reasons. We realized that this should be the future of how we network. I don't think we're competing against anyone and the most common reason why is all of them have in common a number—a number of your immediate follower connections. We have no numbers on this platform because it's purely agent to agent. That's something that I think Series will actually solve.

Nathaneo: Cool thing about what we're doing with this Series house, which obviously a lot of people are talking about, is we're doing something a bit unconventional by creating this house. What we did is we figured out a way to incentivize people to one, of course, grow our product and use that, but two, tie to something that I think is a bit social.

Instead of us trying to focus on organic way of having interns be paid remotely, an organic way of being able to market your product with UGC content which everyone does—why not have our interns come into a house? Instead of them just being online to do the same work they're going to do previously, that's how the idea occurred.

Nathaneo: I think what makes a company go viral is do something a bit controversial, but having the right facts behind what they're doing. If you do something controversial that was stupid, it's not gonna go viral for the right reason, nor is it gonna make you a viral company. You're gonna just look stupid in public.

I think if you build something—product or system—and you have some sort of underlying reason that people can pick up on, even if it's 5%, 10%, that's what creates the virality because it's like, 'OK, why do they actually do this? This is for a reason.' It creates just a cool spiral of thought and that's what leads people to share that because there's sort of uncertainties people like to see—that's what gets them excited even if it is controversial or crazy.

Take what they have, amplify the depth of what they're doing and how it's unique, and then use that as a base for the controversial. Then you get eyes on you and it all supports back to a reason that you intentionally have.

Nathaneo: I grew up with a single mom in Irvine, California. I would say I very much grew up with an inclination towards doing things on the technological side. In 8th grade I was putting together a walking stick called Smart Step with ultrasonic sensors and Arduino microprocessors in order to scan objects in front of it.

But of course I was playing varsity basketball too. I love the kind of duality. I think that was my biggest thing growing up—can I really do things that maybe are expected of me around being able to hoop, being able to dunk, all those fun things, but also at the same time balancing that with the duality of being the most technical person in the room.

I think after especially becoming valedictorian in my high school, that was where I realized that yeah, I think I can change the norm.

Nathaneo: I think that although Yale University does have a few famous entrepreneurs, there wasn't much entrepreneurship happening currently, and I think that's because there's a big encouragement to rather wait until you finish school to start building a company, or there is this notion that you immediately have to drop out to do so. It's very rare to be able to kind of pair both together.

Now that Series has been able to raise the largest round in the current Ivy League of students, we're trying to stand for the point that you can build a successful venture while staying in class or at least while keeping things that are closer to you, and that's because you can use them as an advantage instead of a disadvantage.

A lot of people see school as something that takes time away, which maybe it does for late homework assignments or tests, but the benefit is you're able to connect with your community, especially if that's who you're marketing to. We recently did a marketing initiative that I think being a student has a tremendous impact on in a positive direction because we know the value of staying in school and being able to communicate with these people while being in class with them.

Nathaneo: We've had talks with VCs of course before the raise about what do you think about this idea, what do you think about this MVP we made, but oftentimes we were very skeptical. Actually funny, they'd say this wouldn't work. This is not an issue that we'll be able to proliferate long term because we weren't building something that people have seen before. This wasn't anything on the B2B side which was very hot around January, which is when we were thinking about actually seriously pitching.

We actually had a meeting with a former Andreessen Horowitz partner and decided to take the trip to SF just to pitch it for the second time, which ended up being a million dollar dinner.

Nathaneo: One of the biggest, most important things is really just focusing on how you tell the story. Here's what's happening in the market. Here's why it's changing. Here's why I'm gonna be on top of that change. Or even better, here's how I'm creating a new market on top of that.

That was the story that we pitched—that we're creating a new market. We'll be the first industry standard of that market. We knew there was a shift in consumer AI. There was a shift in this technology window where people are more enticed to invest or more importantly give AI a chance in the social space.

This has not been done before—two Black guys who go to an Ivy League raising this amount of capital. After that we've seen so many other companies raise money very fast because it's like, 'OK if those guys can do it, I definitely can do it,' which is another norm to break. Whenever you do something first it's equally fun and exciting and fruitful because you don't know how the world's gonna take it, but it shouldn't stop you from doing it.

Nathaneo: Speed has been our biggest asset. A lot of people are scared to move at fast speeds because things break. We're not scared of that. It's not about a certain battle. It's about the war—it's about you being able to have sort of a capture or share around your own industry and your own niche. The faster you do that, you gotta do that at all costs.

But you need to be building something that has depth, and that can be depth through how you have some sort of innovative, unique technology. That can be depth of how you're approaching your consumerism. Once you can amplify that depth and showcase that to the world through your marketing, that's what makes things stick because that's something that people will remember as a new iteration of whatever industry they're in.

Nathaneo: The perfect example is, of course, the knowledge of horses versus cars. People always say they want a faster horse. Maybe some people have heard that quote before. It's because they're very used to a 10x improvement of what they have instead of going to the next iteration of what's actually needed.

I think that's something that at least we pride ourselves in—we're not thinking of a better LinkedIn or a better social platform. We're thinking of what's the next iteration of what can actually be a useful product for people to utilize to build better relationships and connections.

Nathaneo: Putting yourself in a position where you look up and say 'I wanna be like that one day' is not a bad thing to do. That's like having some sort of idol or roadblock, but I like to have a variety of saying I've seen these different trends from companies that are doing this—SpaceX to Facebook to all these different social platforms. How can I take all that knowledge and go in a new direction? Because that's how you really build innovation.

I think all the stories of all the social platforms inspire me in some way, but to take all that together leads me to say I want my story to inspire myself in the next 10 years versus saying I see one company that I wanna straight shoot for and become that in the next 10 years.