STARTUP STAGE: Nowadays is an AI copilot that simplifies corporate event planning

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

Nowadays is an AI copilot that automates the boring parts of corporate event planning. For example, our AI can contact venues by email and phone to get availability, deal with back-and-forth negotiations and present the best options. 

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

• Business: Nowadays is a software platform that leverages AI to streamline corporate event planning. Its AI handles venue sourcing, negotiations and logistics to make event planning faster and more cost-efficient.
• Technology: The core technology is a proprietary AI model that interacts with venues, extracts the quotes from attachments, and negotiates rates and concessions. Nowadays’ platform integrates with a global database of over 400,000 venues, which is continually updated through partnerships with event agencies and venues.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

• Strengths: We make planning simpler by handling the outreach to venues and vendors with AI, saving our clients time and money for their events.
• Weaknesses: 100% dependence on AI and technology for automation may present limitations, so we integrate human-in-the-loop for sanity checks and to train the AI.
• Opportunities: 
  • Expanding into new markets and verticals, such as wedding planning or non-corporate events.
  • Building partnerships with additional event agencies to expand reach.
• Threats: 
  • Competition from established players in the space.
  • Rapid changes in the AI landscape could disrupt our technology or business model.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

Planning corporate events, whether a small team gathering or large-scale conference, is often a logistical nightmare. Managing manual emails, spreadsheets and callbacks can be incredibly time-consuming and costly.

With Nowadays, our AI can contact venues by email and phone to get availability, deal with back-and-forth negotiations, and present the best options.

Our tech scales the impact of human event planners, so they can focus on creating memorable experiences instead of getting bogged down by logistics.

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

We’ve proudly planned events ranging from Amazon’s 25-person intimate executive dinners in New York to Google’s offsite at Universal for 375 employees.

Our current customers are chiefs of staff, executive assistants, and corporate event planners of mid-size and enterprise tech companies who have used Nowadays to supercharge their workflow. Event agencies also white-label our solution to expand their event capacity.

Our success isn’t just in numbers; it’s in the trust and satisfaction of our clients. Our strong inbound growth comes from referrals, drawing on our relationships with high-profile clients like Supabase, Datadog, and Notion. One example is a senior manager at Google who used Nowadays for a team outing, loved his experience and shared with several other directors and executive assistants at Google, four of seven who converted to paying customers the next week.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

Unlike individual events, corporate events are an excellent market, because the customers have high willingness to pay and low churn. It’s such a good market that Cvent, leading event management software, was recently bought for $4.6 billion.

There is a $3 billion opportunity with white-labeling alone using bottom-up sizing and our assumptions listed below.

How and when will you make money?

We’re profitable! We charge an annual subscription fee or 5% sourcing fee per event from the customer and 7-10% commission from hotels.

We’re IATA-certified and customers love that Nowadays is able to negotiate better rates than they can on their own.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

Anna Sun and Amy Yan are sisters who graduated from MIT and Johns Hopkins. Both served as class presidents for their universities and organized 3000+ person events.

Anna was previously a software engineer at Datadog, DoorDash and Amazon. She studied computer science at MIT and managed a $500,000 annual budget to organize social events for 1300+ students.

Prior to Nowadays, Amy worked at Google, Meta and McKinsey & Company. Her extensive event management experience spans across 11 countries, having orchestrated successful gatherings with over 2,000 attendees. 

They've booked over $4 million in events with inspiring tech companies including Google, Amazon, Notion and Supabase.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion your business?

Diversity, equity and inclusion are foundational principles at our company. As a women-founded company, we are proud to announce that we are certified by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Learning to say no to customers. As very service-oriented people, we love saying yes and providing delight. We still say yes a lot, but given that it’s in scope and going towards our long-term mission.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact - so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?

Built by MIT engineers, we’re the first AI-driven company to tackle this space with a software-first solution. Our moat lies in our proprietary model and global database of 400,000 venues built by partnerships with venues and event agencies. With unbeatable prices, faster response times and 30x more inventory than competitors, we guarantee top-tier access and the best deals for our clients.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

A year from now, we expect Nowadays to have scaled to hundreds of corporate clients, with our AI-driven platform automating a wider variety of event planning tasks. Our global network of venues will be expanded, offering faster, more personalized service and exclusive deals, positioning us as the go-to solution for corporate event planners.

What is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

Our mission is to build the go-to platform that simplifies event planning, with a focus on long-term growth and becoming the market leader in the space. We’re working to create a world where the joy of events is never overshadowed by the complexity of planning them, making memorable experiences accessible to everyone, everywhere.