GrepBeat last wrote about What’s Good (then as “Check What’s Good”) in October of 2024. At that time, it was a newly launched event discovery platform designed to pool information from hundreds of sources and help users discover events in their hometowns. Today, the startup is deploying this AI-powered platform with tourism boards and marketing organizations, expanding their reach, and growing off their own revenue.
For this piece, we caught up with Founder Megan Rowe to learn more about her, how What’s Good has built on its early concept, and what’s next as a small team eyes expansion to new cities and regions.
GrepBeat: Before we get started, for readers who may not be familiar, what’s the elevator pitch for What’s Good?
Megan Rowe: What’s Good is an AI-powered event discovery platform for tourism boards and DMOs (Destination Marketing Organizations). It pulls events from hundreds of sources so visitors and locals can see what’s happening in a city without anyone entering it by hand. We proved it in Wilmington first, by building a local media outlet.
GB: When we got in touch, we asked you to look back on your last feature in GrepBeat. Reading about where you were then, what stands out as the biggest change?
Rowe: When I re-read our first piece, we were still selling ads and talking about pivoting to city tourism departments someday. Now that’s the business; the software side has taken off with bigger contracts than we expected and now we’re in 20 cities.
GB: How has your team grown or evolved since we last spoke?
Rowe: We’ve added a data and QA specialist and editorial assistant on the Wilmington media side, who helps me keep up with the content. We’re still a small team on purpose, and it lets us move fast.
GB: What milestones or accomplishments are you most proud of?
Rowe: Growing our local audience to 100K without spending a dollar on ads. Getting revenue-positive on both the media and software sides. Growing to roughly 20 government and media deals. Supporting 100-plus small businesses. Getting invited to speak at conferences about how we connect communities and how other cities can do the same.
And being a finalist for WILMA’s Women to Watch in Business, out of hundreds of nominees.
GB: You mentioned you’re in the midst of a raise. How has your funding situation has evolved?
Rowe: We started with local angel investors, which is what let us work on this full time early on. We kept our later fundraising small, because the software side took off with some large contracts and revenue became the better path. Right now we’re mostly growing off what we earn.
GB: You’ve been on the scene for a little while now. People may know you as a founder, but perhaps less so as a human being. Tell us something we don’t know about you that has nothing to do with your life as a founder.
Rowe: People tend to have a certain picture of me as someone who’s always out at the next opening or event, and honestly, that’s the smaller part of my life. Most of my time off is spent on long walks or bike rides with no plan, looking for little adventures, with my dog Clyde, a Belgian Malinois. I have a deep, deep appreciation for nature and try to spend as much time as possible in it and use my influence to advocate for it in the Wilmington area.
GB: What partners or organizations (service providers, advisors, investors, if any) have been most helpful to you?
Rowe: Our first customers, including Wilmington and Beaches, our local DMO, who gave us a shot before we had a track record and opened doors for us with other tourism agencies. The Newsletter Club Discord group has been huge too, since it’s full of other media operators working through the same problems, so there’s usually someone who’s already tried what I’m about to try.
Our mentors help us steer the ship and give us guidance. And our investors, who gave us the runway to do this full time before it was making money.
GB: What is your next, biggest challenge?
Rowe: Growing without losing what made it work. More cities and more contracts on a small team means keeping the quality high and making sure every customer still feels like the only one.
GB: If you could go back in time to speak to yourself on the day you founded your startup, what advice would you give your younger self?
Rowe: I’d tell her not to underestimate the impact she can make, and to trust her intuition. We’re building in a space that’s still the wild west, so there isn’t a clear playbook, and her own read on things counts for more than she’d think. And do it scared.
GB: People ask founders about their startups nonstop…. Is there anything about What’s Good that you don’t get asked but that you’d like to speak to?
Rowe: People often know What’s Good from the software side or the local media side—not both. But in reality, they feed each other. I pioneer things firsthand on the media side, so I see what works and what doesn’t and integrate those insights into our product and conversations. We didn’t expect the two sides to matter this much to each other, but it’s become our real edge.
GB: Finally, you finish a long, grueling day of starting up. You’re hungry and/or thirsty. Where in Wilmington are you headed?
Rowe: I’m going to Benny’s Big Time in the South Front area for pizza and their chicken parm appetizer.
