Being at the right place at the right time led Yale University\u2019s Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow to hit the jackpot.<\/p>\n
The founders are the masterminds behind Series, an AI social platform capturing the attention of Generation Z. While many may wonder how Johnson, a computer science and economics major, and Hargrow, a neuroscience<\/a> major, balance entrepreneurship<\/a> with academics, the duo clarified that dropping out of Yale University was never an option. Instead, they\u2019ve learned to set boundaries as they navigate building their platform and establishing themselves in the venture capital<\/a> landscape.<\/p>\n During the AFROTECH\u2122<\/a> U Summit at AFROTECH\u2122 Conference 2025<\/a> in Houston, Hargrow said, \u201cYou really can\u2019t do the outstanding job of being a good founder and being profitable and raise a round, and do all these things that we want and are aspiring to do if you hedge. And that hedging is when you\u2019re trying to get your homework in by 12, but you also want to raise a million dollars before you graduate school. You got to pick one or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cSo, what we were able to do is very much so pick what we wanted to do, but remember our kind of bounds as young Black men. To get into those rooms, the only thing that was really getting us into those rooms was\u2026 Yale. So I couldn\u2019t just drop out like a lot of other minorities and white children might have the privilege to do, because they have a pipeline of succession behind them or maybe their parents did it. But for us, totally thrown into this unknowing, unbeknownst to what entrepreneurship<\/a> was, we realized, let\u2019s just play it safe and not hedge our bets. Let\u2019s go all in on one dream.\u201d<\/p>\n That dream so far encompasses a historic $3.1 million in pre-seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz Partner Anne Lee Skates (now with Parable VC), which set a new precedent for Ivy league students, as AFROTECH\u2122\u00a0<\/a> previously reported.<\/p>\n