Ex-YC founder Vin Bui becomes engineer #1 at AI event-planning startup Nowadays
Y Combinator Blog · rss · 2026-10-20
Y Combinator Blog profiles Vin Bui, who left his own YC W25 company and became the first full-time engineer at Nowadays (S23), an SF startup using AI to plan corporate events end to end, from offsites to vendor negotiations.
- He found the company on Work at a Startup, drawn by its dog logo and a website he knew he could improve.
- As engineering hire #1 he operates like a technical founder: building engineering from scratch, setting processes, leading SOC 2 compliance, with no mentorship — "you have to mentor yourself."
- He evaluated the founders like he'd evaluate co-founders: could he have impact, and could Amy and Anna actually win?
- His favorite build: AI voice systems that call hotels and negotiate on clients' behalf. Daily setup: Ghostty terminal, Claude Code CLI over GUIs, right-sized models per task, custom skills and workflows.
- Now an 11-person health-first team, he's the first person teammates bounce big ideas off of. Nowadays is hiring.
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