A Yale Student Raised $3.1M in 2 Weeks for an AI Social App | Series, Nathaneo Johnson

Intro

00:00Hey, 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.

00:13Series is the first AI social network. We are essentially 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 like a quarter of a million, which is really exciting to see.

00:28We raised $3.1 million in 14 days, which is now the largest round of any startup that is currently in the Ivy League [Music]

Why We Build Social Media

00:46series was honestly a really I think interesting story. It actually started when Sean, my co-founder, and I started a podcast our freshman year at Yale. This is interviewing founders and CEOs from 23 and me to genius lyrics to Runway. We're very actually curious on how exactly they used their own warm network to build successful businesses.

01:06We know how hard it is to get access to the right people, especially for professional reasons, whether that is raising capital or that's getting a new job. I'd imagine that anyone who goes to a swear IB internship, there's definitely five people that were probably just equal, if not better, of a candidate that didn't make it.

01:22college internship that aren't able to have say like dad's golf buddy to get them into the IB internship. I'd say connections but more importantly I guess perceived value is something that usually requires a warm network to be able to get into.

01:36This 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. So what happened is we ended up experimenting with AI, right? I come from a CS background and was able to initially construct this like early version chatbot that used emails to make warm intros.

01:55We blasted that to Yale's email list to Princeton I think a day later and it kind of had some sort of variety kind of blew up within that student community. People were using this for like startup ideas, art gallery ideas, kind of a specific range like mainly professional reasons to realize that this should be the future how we network.

02:12I 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 connection like account we have no numbers on this platform because it's purely agent to agent that's something that I think series will actually solve and then hopefully myself can solve as well

Do the Unconventional

02:32cool thing about what we're doing with this series race which obviously a lot of people are talking about is we're doing something a bit unconventional right 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 right instead of them just being

03:00online to do the same work they're going to do previously that's kind of how the idea occurred and I think what makes company go viral is do something a bit controversial but having the right facts behind and what they're doing. If you do something controversial that was stupid, right, it's not going to go viral for the right reason, nor is it's going to make you call a viral company.

03:17You're going to just look stupid in public. I think if you build something product or system and you have some sort of like underlying reason that people can pick up on, even if it's like 5% 10%, that's what creates the virality because it's like, okay, why do they actually do this?

03:32Was this for a reason? And like it creates this like cool spiral of thought and that's what leads people to share that because there's sort of uncertainty people like to see like that's what gets them excited even if it is controversial or crazy I don't think it matters take what they have amplify the depth of what they're doing and how it's unique and then use that as a base on the controversial then you get eyes on you and like it all supports back a reason that you intentionally have

When Everyone Doubts I Break the Norm

04:01grew up as a single mom in Irvine, California. I would say very much grew up with like a inclination towards obviously like doing things on the technological side. So like this was building like a walking stick called smart step. I called it in eighth grade.

04:15They use ultrasonic sensors and our dun microprocessors in order to essentially scan objects in front of it. But of course, you know, I was playing varsity basketball, right? So like I love the kind of duality. I think that was my biggest thing around growing up is like can I really do things that maybe are expected of me around like you know being able to hoop being able to dunk all those fun things but like also at the same time balancing that with the duality of like being the most crack in the room.

04:37I think after especially becoming a valtor in my high school like that was where I realized that yeah I think I can change the norm. I think that although Yale University does have a few famous entrepreneurs, there wasn't much. That was like one of the bigger problems.

04:50And 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.

05:02Now that series has been able to raise the largest round in the current IV League of students, we're trying to stand for the point that you can build a successful venture, right? or maybe 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.

05:19A 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 your marketing, too. And 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.

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How We Raised $3.1M in 14 Days

06:49We've had talks with VCs of course before the raise of like what do you think about this idea? What do you think about this MVP we made? But often times people were very skeptical actually pointing out to say like this wouldn't work. This is an industry that will be able to proliferate long term because we weren't building something that people have seen before.

07:02This wasn't like uh anything on the B2B side which was like very hot I think around like January which is when like we were thinking about actually seriously pitching. We actually had, I think, a meeting with a former Andrew Horward's partner, decided to take the trip to SF just to pitch it for the second time, which ended up into a million-dollar dinner.

07:19One of the biggest, most important things is really just like focusing on how you tell the story. Here's what's happened in the market. Here's why it's changing. Here's what I'm going to be on top of that change. Or even better, here's how I'm creating a new market on top of that.

07:32That was a story that we pitched that we are 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 like this called a technology window that people are more enticed to invest or more important than that I guess give AI a chance in the social space.

07:47This has not been done before to black guys who go to an Ivy League to raise this amount of capital. After that we've seen so many other companies raise money very fast because okay if those guys can do it I definitely can do it which is another norm to break.

08:00So it's like whenever you do something first, it's like equally fun and exciting as fearful because you don't know how the world's going to take it, but shouldn't stop you from doing it. Speed has been our biggest asset. A lot of people are scared to move at fast speeds because things break.

08:15We're not scared of that. It's not about a certain battle, right? It's about like, you know, the war, right? It's about you being able to like all time have sort of a capture or share around your own industry and your own niche. The faster you do that, you got to do that at all cost.

08:29But building something that has like depth, right? And that can be depth through how you have innovative some sort of like unique technology that can be depth of how you're approaching like your consumerism. Once you can like amplify that depth and showcase that to the world through your marketing, that's what makes something stick because that's something that people remember as a new iteration of whatever industry they're in.

08:51The perfect example is of course I love the knowledge of like the horses to cars. People always say they want a faster horse. Maybe some people heard that quote before. It's because like they're very used to like a 10x of what they have instead of going in the next iteration of what's actually needed.

09:04I think that's like something that at least we pride ourselves in is like we're not thinking of like 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.

09:17Putting yourself in a position where you look up to say I want to be like that one day. It's not a bad thing to do. that's like having some sort of like idol or roadblock. But I like to have a variety of like saying I've seen these different trends from companies that doing like SpaceX to Facebook to like all these different social platforms.

09:32How 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 the story to inspire myself in the next 10 years versus saying I see one company that I want to straight shoot for and become that in the next 10 years.

09:55[Music]