$8.2M raised
Series
AI-powered social network matching founders and mentors.
Founders: Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow
Two College Kids Raise a $5.1 Million Pre-Seed to Build an AI Social Network in iMessage (opens in a new tab)What each event moves, what each cohort raised, how founders came through NGEN and where they are now.
Largest raise first, each with the press that covered it or, before there is any, the company’s own site.
$8.2M raised
AI-powered social network matching founders and mentors.
Founders: Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow
Two College Kids Raise a $5.1 Million Pre-Seed to Build an AI Social Network in iMessage (opens in a new tab)
$8M raised
Company-owned AI models that beat the frontier, backed by a16z speedrun.
Founders: Pranay Sadani and Yash Iyer
zorbe.ai (opens in a new tab)
$3.5M raised
Voice AI agents for financial services.
Freya: $3.5 Million Raised To Expand Human-Like Voice Automation Technology (opens in a new tab)
$3.2M raised
Privacy-first data platform for college admissions counseling.
Nerd Apply raises $3.2 million in seed funding for its college admissions counseling platform (opens in a new tab)
$2M raised
Turns agricultural waste into critical input products for old-world industry.
Founders: Emma Limor and Sunrit Panda
nirvanacarbon.com (opens in a new tab)
$500K raisedAI platform building company-native agents to automate work.
Doe: A new productivity platform (opens in a new tab)
$75K raised
Protects online publisher content against AI scraping.
Founders: Rishi Ambavanekar and Tyler Sacharow
Cloak Wins $75,000 Perlman Grand Prize in Venture Lab Startup Challenge (opens in a new tab)
Techstars
AI co-composer helping musicians create chords and melodies.
Founders: Reuel Williams
How Mathematician Reuel Williams Is Uniting Art & Technology (opens in a new tab)Averaged over every NGEN conference, trek and pitch competition.
Founders grouped by the year they first came to an NGEN event.
| Cohort | Founders | Startups | Raised |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | TODO | TODO | TODO |
| 2024 | TODO | TODO | TODO |
| 2025 | TODO | TODO | TODO |
| 2026 | TODO | TODO | TODO |
Every founder on the record came in one of two ways.
Came to a conference, a Founder Trek or a pitch competition, and built from the people they met there.
Ran NGEN programs on the team, then went on to found companies of their own.
Alumni and former team members, and what they do today.
| Name | Came through | Now |
|---|---|---|
| TODO | Event attendee | TODO |
| TODO | Event attendee | TODO |
| TODO | Team alumni | TODO |
| TODO | Team alumni | TODO |
Student founders across the network come from these schools.














