Meet Anna Sun and Amy Yan, two sisters who started with a desire to work together on something impactful. Their event planning startup, Nowadays, won the People’s Choice – Seedup Category at the Global Startup Pitch 2024 at WiT Singapore in October. This is their story.
Post-graduating, Anna, based in California, and Amy, in Washington had pursued different careers. Amy, the elder by eight years and who studied at John Hopkins, took the management consulting and corporate path, eventually working with Google and Meta in internal strategy roles.
“I got tired of making rich people richer,” she said.
Anna, who studied computer science at MIT and did internships at companies such as Doordash, found the pace all too slow. She wanted a pace where she could build products, release them quickly and test. “I wanted to do something faster-moving,” she said.
At university, as class president, she had been used to organising events for thousands of students. “We would call ice cream trucks to order tons of ice creams,” she said, recalling too the time she had to personally pick up 2,000 McDonald’s McNuggets because there wasn’t a way to arrange a bulk delivery and wishing there was an easier way.
“I thought, what if we could remove these boring tasks with AI? I started automating little bits of the event planning processes.”
Sensing a startup opportunity, she applied to Y-Combinator in the summer of 2023. On its acceptance, she called her sister. “I asked her what she was doing, she told me, and I joked, weren’t you working on that too last year?”
Laughed Amy, who admits to being more risk-averse, “She talked me into quitting. But I also wanted to do something different, something I am passionate about. We also wanted to work together; we’ve always wanted to do that.
“I wanted to use my skills for something more meaningful, and Anna wanted to create something that moved at the speed of startups, not the glacial pace of big tech.”
Added Anna, “We got our acceptance letter the day before my graduation, and then within that day, Amy put in her two weeks’ notice at Google.”
Anna Sun facing the “dragons” at the Global Startup Pitch at WiT Singapore in October.
$2M fund raise: Overcoming stereotypes in funding
Thus, was Nowadays born, with a $500,000 cheque from Y Combinator. It has since raised another $2m party seed round (meaning no lead investor) from VCs, including Y Combinator, Basis Set Ventures, Hike VC, VentureUs, Underdog Labs, Decacorn Capital, SBXi, E14, and dozens of other angels.
“It’s been difficult to raise,” said Anna. “First, the funding environment is challenging. Second, it’s a question of how we present ourselves, being Asian females? It is hard to overcome stereotypes.”
Asked if she put in her own money, Anna laughed, “I have no money. Our family offered and asked, how much do you want us to donate? I don’t think they understood.”
Anna Sun (right) and Amy Yan: Two sisters out to transform event planning.
Ready to expand: Nowadays leverages AI to ease event planning
With the new funds, the two sisters are ready to expand the business.
Nowadays uses LLM AI to automatically plan large, expensive events. Using its own database of 400,000 global venues and a proprietary model based on a combination of OpenAI, Anthropic, and its own coding, Nowadays emails venues, caterers, and the like to gather bids. It will even make phone calls to nudge a response to unanswered emails. It then organizes the information and presents it to the event planner, who can make decisions and sign contracts.
It has since been used to book over $4 million worth of events, including for tech companies like Google, Amazon, Notion, and Supabase and has a roster of 80 companies.
Nowadays is aimed at events with budgets of over $20,000 and its fees are based on budget, charging 5% of what it sources and 10% commissions from hotels booked. Alternatively, event planners can sign up for an annual subscription. While it’s most often used for corporate events, it has been used to plan a wedding and a 50th anniversary.
Anyone interested in using Nowadays begins by filling out an intake form to describe the event, location, budget, and any specific needs.
“It’s a very complex space, and lots of nuances,” said Anna.
Fierce competition: Underdog mentality to the fore
They are aware too of the highly competitive space they are entering. Established players like Cvent and Eventbrite are adding AI tools to their offerings, for instance. And new startups are constantly emerging.
But they are more than ready to take on the challenges. The sisters have developed an even stronger bond after the Y Combinator stint. “For four months, we stayed in the same bed,” said Anna, “I learnt that she snores and needs a heating pad.”
Amy interjected, “I learnt she goes for speed over accuracy. She’s never known a world without social media and she introduces me to new tech.”
This cross-generational learning has been useful to two sisters, born of Shanghainese immigrants and who grew up in Michigan. They are used to being underdogs. “It was not very common to have Asians in classrooms,” said Anna. “I’d bring seaweed snacks to school and people would laugh at me. I am used to being the odd one out.”
Their roles are clear – Anna’s the engineer and builder; Amy runs the business side of things.
“Our goal is to make planning simple. We want to completely automate venue sourcing, to make the hoteliers’ job easier,” said Anna, who envisages 95% of tasks being automated by AI, leaving the last mile to humans.
“AI is accelerating at a pace that’s scary, even for me,” she added. “I can’t even imagine the future˘”
Added Amy, “Being a startup at this moment is thrilling. AI will allow us to spend more time on things that matter, that’s exciting.”
