From chess and sudoku to the sport of bouldering, Amy Sun Yan ’16 has always loved to solve a puzzle.
Today, as COO and co-founder of Nowadays, she’s taking on the notoriously difficult problems inherent in event planning—a field that, until now, required gathering and evaluating hundreds of details and documents individually. Nowadays uses artificial intelligence to automate that process and present options in a clean, modern interface for easier decision-making.
Founding a company wasn’t always in the plan for Yan, who double majored in mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering at the Whiting School and began her career as a banking consultant at McKinsey before moving into strategy and operations roles at Groupon, Meta, and Google. After eight-and-a-half years in corporate work, she was looking to make a greater impact—and in 2023, her younger sister Anna proposed that they start something of their own.
Both women knew the challenges of event planning firsthand, having served as class presidents at their respective universities (Amy at Johns Hopkins, Anna at MIT).
“It’s a sea of emails, spreadsheets, and phone calls,” says Yan. “It takes so many callbacks to get vendors to respond to you, only to find out they’re unavailable on your dates, and you need to start over. We wanted to put the joy back in event planning.”
Although Amy classifies herself as risk-averse, Anna convinced her to take the leap. The sisters were accepted into the elite Y Combinator program, which helps early-stage startups with funding, mentorship, and community. To date, it’s launched more than 4,000 companies, including Airbnb and Stripe.
Their vision for Nowadays is to handle end-to-end planning for any type of occasion. It already offers a streamlined selection for venues and travel. The bigger engineering challenge, currently in progress, is to cover every type of vendor, from UV face painters to dune buggy rentals and beyond.
Such custom events are dear to Yan’s heart. A prime example is a project now underway for Grant Delpit of the Cleveland Browns. Delpit’s event will pair 120 children with 20 NFL players for flag football and mentoring. In addition to the satisfaction of supporting a worthy cause, the experience also earned the sisters a chance to attend their first Super Bowl.
One year into the company’s launch, the response has been extremely promising. Nowadays operates in 26 countries and has booked $3.4 million in revenue, with clients including Google, Supabase, and Notion. The growth has come exclusively through word of mouth, with no marketing required.
Yan says she’s all in on the entrepreneurial life. “If you have an idea, follow it,” she advises. “The earlier you start, the earlier you’re going to see traction.”