Nowadays
AI-native platform for corporate events, handling everything from venue sourcing to day-of coordination.
Website: https://www.nowadays.ai/
Cover Block
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| Name | Nowadays |
| Tagline | AI-native platform for corporate events, handling everything from venue sourcing to day-of coordination. |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, United States |
| Founded | 2023 |
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | SaaS |
| Industry | HR / Future of Work |
| Technology | AI / Machine Learning |
| Geography | Global / Remote-First |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2) |
| Funding Label | Seed (total disclosed ~$2,000,000) |
Links
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- Website: https://www.nowadays.ai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nowadays-ai/
- Careers: https://www.nowadays.ai/careers/software-engineer-intern
Executive Summary
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Nowadays is an AI-native platform that automates the end-to-end planning of corporate events, a process historically defined by manual vendor sourcing and complex contract negotiations [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. The company's immediate relevance stems from its application of large language models to a high-friction, high-spend business process, promising to convert weeks of administrative work into a software-managed workflow.
The company was founded in 2023 by sisters Anna Sun and Amy Yan, who initially scaled their operational experience from planning events for thousands of university students [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. Their product differentiates by using AI to directly contact and negotiate with venues in 22 languages, parsing dense proposals into standardized comparisons, and managing a proprietary database of over 400,000 vetted venues [Y Combinator, retrieved 2024].
Sun's background in product and engineering at Datadog and DoorDash informs the platform's technical build, while the team's collective experience grounds its service model [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. The business is capitalized by a $2 million seed round closed in late 2024, backed by a syndicate including Y Combinator, Hike Ventures, and Basis Set Ventures [TechCrunch, Dec 2024]. Its revenue model appears to be a hybrid of transaction-based fees and annual subscriptions, though specific pricing tiers are still being refined.
The critical watchpoint for the coming quarters is the translation of early automation advantages into durable enterprise contracts. Success will be measured by the platform's ability to move beyond sourcing efficiency to demonstrate material cost savings and streamlined reconciliation for finance teams, thereby justifying its seat at the table alongside established procurement and event management suites.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Core company facts and funding are confirmed by the company's own materials and a major trade publication.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Classification |
|---|---|
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | SaaS |
| Industry / Vertical | HR / Future of Work |
| Technology Type | AI / Machine Learning |
| Geography | Global / Remote-First |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2) |
| Funding | Seed (total disclosed ~$2,000,000) |
Company Overview
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Nowadays was founded in 2023 by sisters Anna Sun and Amy Yan, who launched the company after their own experiences with the logistical grind of organizing large-scale events [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. The San Francisco-based startup emerged from Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch and publicly announced a $2 million seed round in December of that year [TechCrunch, Dec 2024]. The founding narrative centers on the co-founders' background as class presidents at their respective universities, where they planned events for over 3,300 students, a formative experience that informed their focus on automating corporate event planning [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024].
Key early milestones include the development of a proprietary database of over 400,000 vetted venues and the launch of an AI-powered platform that handles sourcing, negotiation, and logistics [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. The company's public traction claims include facilitating over $4 million in client bookings since launch, a figure promoted in late 2024 but not independently verified [Instagram, Dec 2024]. Its client list, cited on its careers page, includes Google, Airbnb, and Quantstamp, though the nature and scale of these engagements are not detailed [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Founding details and funding round confirmed by company and TechCrunch; client and booking claims are single-source and unverified.
Product and Technology
MIXED
Nowadays positions its core product as an enterprise-grade event management platform designed to automate the entire corporate planning workflow, from initial concept to final reconciliation [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. The platform's primary wedge is replacing manual, spreadsheet-heavy processes with an AI-native assistant that handles vendor outreach, proposal analysis, and contract negotiation, tasks that typically consume weeks of a planner's time.
Key product surfaces are detailed on the company's site. The workflow begins with a Flight & Budget Estimator, which uses an attendee list and dates to model travel costs across potential cities [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. For venue sourcing, the platform claims access to a database of over 400,000 vetted properties [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. Its AI agents then conduct outreach, with the system capable of sending personalized emails and making phone calls to gather availability and negotiate rates in 22 languages [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024] [Y Combinator, retrieved 2024]. A central technical claim is the AI's ability to parse complex, 50-page hotel proposals into standardized comparisons within seconds, a task the company says takes over 10 hours manually [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024] [Y Combinator, retrieved 2024]. The platform also includes tools for managing room blocks, attendee logistics, and post-event spend reconciliation [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, retrieved 2024].
Pricing and commercial model details are partially public. The website lists a 'Basic' plan with no service charge, offering one city search and five RFPs [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. A 'Book a Demo' plan carries a 10% service charge and requires a refundable deposit [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. A separate, less-verified source mentions a standard 5% fee or an annual subscription option [Instagram, Dec 2024] [PUBLIC]. The company states it is IATA-certified and a WBENC Certified Women's Business Enterprise, which may provide access to preferred vendor rates and qualify it for corporate supplier diversity programs [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. The underlying tech stack is not explicitly detailed, but an inference from the sole open role for a Software Engineer Intern suggests a full-stack development environment focused on scalable systems [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024] [PRIVATE].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Core product claims are sourced directly from the company website. Pricing and some capability details have partial corroboration or are inferred from public materials.
Market Research
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The corporate event planning market, long a fragmented and manual service industry, is being reshaped by the dual pressures of rising operational costs and the enterprise-wide adoption of AI for workflow automation. While a specific, third-party TAM for AI-native event planning is not yet established, the broader corporate meetings and events market provides a relevant analog. According to a 2023 report by Allied Market Research cited by industry publication Skift, the global meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) market was valued at $876 billion and is projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2032 [Allied Market Research, 2023]. The corporate segment constitutes a significant portion of this activity, driven by the return to in-person gatherings and a heightened focus on ROI and spend management.
Demand for platforms like Nowadays is driven by several clear tailwinds. First, corporate travel and event budgets have rebounded post-pandemic, but finance and procurement teams now demand greater visibility and control over decentralized spend. This creates a need for the spend-surfacing capabilities the company advertises [Y Combinator, 2024]. Second, persistent labor shortages and high turnover in administrative and event coordinator roles increase the appeal of automation that can scale the impact of existing planners. Third, the maturation of large language models has made complex, multi-step tasks like parsing proposals and negotiating in multiple languages a plausible target for automation, a technological shift the company explicitly cites as foundational [nowadays.ai, 2024].
Adjacent and substitute markets include traditional travel management companies (TMCs), which handle flight and hotel bookings but typically lack deep event-specific logistics, and broader procurement software platforms that manage vendor relationships but are not tailored to the event lifecycle. The company's positioning as an "AI-native" platform suggests it competes less on being a system of record and more on being an intelligent agent that replaces manual labor, a wedge into the services market rather than just the software market.
Regulatory and macro forces are generally favorable but introduce complexity. Data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) govern attendee information, while the company's IATA certification and WBENC status are operational enablers for travel and supplier diversity mandates, respectively [nowadays.ai, 2024]. The primary macro risk is a contraction in corporate discretionary spend, which would directly impact event budgets, though this could also accelerate demand for cost-saving automation tools.
Global MICE Market 2023 | 876 | $B
Projected MICE Market 2032 | 1400 | $B
The projected growth of the underlying MICE market, while not a direct measure of Nowadays's addressable segment, indicates a large and expanding total pool of activity into which an efficiency-focused platform can sell. The company's challenge will be to carve out a defined SAM within this broad landscape, moving from a general productivity tool to a must-have for a specific category of corporate planner.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing is drawn from an analogous third-party report; company-specific demand drivers are cited from its own materials.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED Nowadays enters a market defined by entrenched incumbents and a long tail of manual service providers, positioning its AI-native automation as a wedge against both inefficiency and high cost.
| Company | Positioning | Stage / Funding | Notable Differentiator | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nowadays | AI-native platform for end-to-end corporate event planning, automating sourcing, negotiation, and logistics. | Seed ($2M) | Proprietary database of 400,000+ vetted venues; AI-driven outreach and negotiation in 22 languages. | [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]; [TechCrunch, Dec 2024] |
| Cvent | Comprehensive event management and hospitality platform for enterprises and venues. | Public (acquired by Blackstone in 2023) | Dominant market share, extensive supplier network, and deep integrations across the event lifecycle. | [PUBLIC] |
| BoomPop | Platform for planning and managing virtual, hybrid, and in-person team experiences. | Venture-backed (Series A) | Focus on employee experience and engagement, with a strong brand in the tech startup segment. | [PUBLIC] |
The competitive map splits into three tiers. At the top, large-scale enterprise software suites like Cvent and Bizzabo offer full-featured platforms that serve as systems of record for Fortune 500 event departments. These incumbents compete on breadth and integration depth, not speed or cost efficiency for individual event sourcing. The middle tier includes modern challengers like BoomPop and Gatheround, which focus on specific segments such as employee engagement or virtual events, often with a more user-friendly interface. The bottom tier, which represents Nowadays's primary initial target, is the vast, fragmented landscape of manual planners, travel management companies, and individual coordinators using spreadsheets and email. This segment is characterized by high labor costs, slow turnaround, and limited visibility into spend.
Nowadays's defensible edge today rests on two pillars: its proprietary venue database and its AI execution layer. The claimed database of over 400,000 vetted venues, built in partnership with agencies, provides a sourcing scale that individual planners cannot match [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. More critically, the automation of outreach and negotiation,tasks that typically consume dozens of hours,creates a tangible efficiency advantage. The company's claim that its AI can parse 50-page proposals and negotiate rates in 22 languages addresses a specific pain point in global corporate planning [Y Combinator, retrieved 2024]. This edge is perishable, however. The database is a scalable asset but could be replicated by well-funded competitors or aggregated through third-party APIs. The AI workflows, while a current differentiator, are also the most likely feature for incumbents to copy or acquire.
The company's most significant exposure is to incumbents' distribution and relationship advantages. Cvent, for example, owns the primary channel to hotel sales teams and corporate procurement departments, relationships built over decades. A large enterprise is unlikely to rip out its established event management system for a point solution focused solely on planning efficiency. Furthermore, adjacent substitutes pose a threat. Travel management companies (TMCs) like American Express GBT or Navan are expanding into meeting and event spend management, leveraging their existing corporate contracts and global clout. Nowadays does not own these enterprise relationships, and its model of charging a percentage fee on event spend could face pressure from TMCs that bundle services into broader travel agreements.
The most plausible 18-month scenario involves segmentation. If corporate procurement teams continue to prioritize visibility and control over unmanaged meeting spend,a problem Nowadays explicitly surfaces [Y Combinator, retrieved 2024],the company could win as a best-in-class sourcing and negotiation layer that plugs into existing stacks. The winner in this case would be a platform like Nowadays that proves its AI can deliver consistent, auditable cost savings without adding administrative burden. The loser would be the manual, high-touch agency model for mid-market corporate events, which cannot compete on speed or price. Conversely, if incumbents rapidly deploy credible AI automation features of their own, or if procurement demands a single platform for all travel and event spend, Nowadays could find its differentiation eroded and its path to enterprise sales lengthened.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitor profiles are public knowledge; differentiation claims are from company sources.
Opportunity
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The potential prize for Nowadays is the transformation of a fragmented, high-friction corporate events market into a streamlined, software-driven process, capturing a significant share of the billions spent annually on business travel and meetings.
The headline opportunity is for Nowadays to become the default operating system for corporate event planning, a category-defining platform that replaces a constellation of spreadsheets, emails, and manual vendor negotiations. This outcome is reachable because the company's AI-native approach directly targets the most labor-intensive and costly parts of the workflow. The evidence lies in the scale of the initial data asset,a database of over 400,000 vetted venues [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024],and the automation of tasks that typically consume dozens of planner hours, such as parsing 50-page hotel proposals [Y Combinator, retrieved 2024] and conducting outreach in 22 languages [Y Combinator, retrieved 2024]. By embedding itself as the system of record for an organization's meeting spend, the platform could achieve a defensible position akin to modern HRIS or expense management software.
Growth is not a single path. The company's early positioning and client logos suggest several concrete, high-scale scenarios.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Land-and-Expand | Nowadays becomes the mandated vendor for all offsite and meeting planning within large, distributed corporations. | A strategic partnership with a major HRIS or travel management platform (e.g., SAP Concur, Workday) to embed its sourcing engine. | The company already lists enterprise clients like Google and Airbnb on its careers page [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024], demonstrating an ability to serve complex, global organizations. |
| The Procurement Standard | The platform evolves from a planner's tool to a procurement and finance team's mandatory control point for managing and auditing all third-party event spend. | A product launch focused on spend analytics and policy enforcement, surfacing "unmanaged meeting spend across an entire organization" [Y Combinator, retrieved 2024]. | This addresses a clear pain point for CFOs seeking visibility and cost control, moving the buyer from an event manager to a finance executive. |
| The Marketplace Pivot | The vendor database and negotiation engine become a two-sided marketplace, with venues paying for premium placement and guaranteed lead volume. | Achieving a critical mass of corporate booking volume that makes the platform indispensable for venue sales teams. | The company's IATA certification and access to preferred rates [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024] indicate an existing, formalized relationship with the supply side that could be monetized further. |
Compounding for Nowadays looks like a classic data and workflow flywheel. Each event planned generates more data on venue performance, negotiation outcomes, and attendee preferences. This proprietary dataset improves the AI's recommendation accuracy and negotiation use, which in turn attracts more clients and generates more data. Early signals of this flywheel include the claimed ability to source venues "within minutes, compared to days for manual sourcing" and analyze proposals "within seconds, compared to 10+ hours manually" [nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024]. As the dataset grows, the platform's utility for both planners and venues increases, creating a barrier to entry for competitors lacking similar historical deal flow.
The size of the win can be framed by looking at a public comparable. Cvent, a major incumbent in the event management technology space, was taken private in a transaction valuing the company at approximately $4.6 billion in 2021 [Reuters, 2021]. While Cvent serves a broader market including large conferences, its core enterprise event management software segment is a direct analog. If Nowadays successfully executes on the "Enterprise Land-and-Expand" scenario and captures a meaningful portion of the corporate retreat and meeting planning segment, a multi-billion dollar outcome is a plausible ceiling. This is a scenario-based illustration, not a forecast, but it defines the magnitude of the opportunity if the company's AI-driven efficiency wedge proves decisive.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Opportunity sizing relies on public comparables and company claims about process efficiency; growth scenarios are extrapolated from early client logos and product direction.
Sources
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[nowadays.ai, retrieved 2024] Nowadays - AI Event Planner for Corporate Teams | https://www.nowadays.ai/
[TechCrunch, Dec 2024] Y Combinator alum Nowadays, founded by sisters, raises ... | https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/06/y-combinator-alum-nowadays-founded-by-sisters-raises-2m-to-automate-event-planning/
[Instagram, Dec 2024] Nowadays, a 2023-founded event-planning AI startup ... | https://www.instagram.com/p/DDXYeKvxz6O/?hl=en
[Y Combinator, retrieved 2024] Nowadays - AI Event Planner for Corporate Teams | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nowadays
[Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, retrieved 2024] Nowadays - AI Event Planner for Corporate Teams | https://www.nowadays.ai/
[Allied Market Research, 2023] Global Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) Market Report | https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/meetings-incentives-conferences-and-exhibitions-market-A31528
[Reuters, 2021] Blackstone to take Cvent private in $4.6 billion deal | https://www.reuters.com/business/blackstone-take-cvent-private-46-bln-deal-2021-07-19/
Articles about Nowadays
- Nowadays's AI Agent Negotiates Venue Contracts in 22 Languages — The YC-backed startup, founded by sisters, has processed over $4 million in corporate event bookings by automating the planner's most tedious tasks.