How What's Good ATX Hit 10,000 Users Without Spending a Dollar on Ads

This week's Founder Friday is about an Austin events platform that grew by answering one question over and over: what's fun to do in Austin?

Michelle Rueda built What's Good ATX to help Austinites find the city's most interesting events, from weird hobby groups and local music to spiritual markets, creative meetups, and Tuesday night things you'd probably never find on your own. The platform now includes a map view, personalized event recommendations, and a local radio feature that only plays Austin musicians with shows happening that week.

To grow the newsletter behind it, What's Weird ATX, Michelle built a Reddit-monitoring tool that flags posts from people asking what to do in Austin, so she can jump in with a genuinely useful answer. Almost 10,000 users later, the platform has grown entirely organically, without a single dollar of ad spend.

What founders can steal from this:

• Find the places where people are already asking for your product and show up there
• Turn product features into discovery wedges
• Build niche communities with patience and consistency

Here's what Michelle shared about keeping Austin weird, growing through Reddit, and why patience is the DNA of every good niche community...

What is What's Weird ATX, and who is it for?

What's Weird ATX is the newsletter, and it lives under a broader platform called What's Good ATX, which I'm hoping will be the place Austinites go to find awesome, fun things to do. The newsletter has been an amazing ride. I focus on finding the most unique and interesting events in Austin every week. I think it's actually getting people out, which means everything.

Where did the idea come from?

Austin is a very special place. I've lived in a lot of places throughout my life, and this is the place I decided to make my eternal home. Whenever I talk to someone here, they're usually very smart, with a unique story and a unique way of seeing the world. There are so many creative people here, and one of the biggest challenges is connecting them. People are doing really cool stuff, but it's hard to find the things you'd actually be interested in checking out. The Keep Austin Weird ethos is a short way of describing all of that, and it was the perfect thing to build a newsletter around.

What pockets of Austin do you think deserve more attention?

It's not so much that they don't get attention, it's that people don't know where to find them. There are so many. "Woo" Austin bridges the creative community and the business community. There's a huge spiritual scene. The Austin Witches Market happens every month, plus little satellite witches markets. The musician community is very vibrant. The improv community is active, and there are people working on little theater projects. Discovery is just difficult.

There's also a lot of crafting and hobbyist activity happening. This is a call to anybody listening: if you have a passion about something and you're not an expert, maybe you just took up carving or sculpting and you're passionate about it, think about getting a group of people together and teaching them 101. You don't have to be an expert. I will help you get the word out. Just contact me.

What makes Austin special for these kinds of communities?

People talk a lot about whether the weird has left Austin, and I don't think it has. New York is a city of transplants, but Austin is also very much a city of transplants. People come from all over looking for something they haven't found anywhere else. There's a vibe here, and once you feel it, you're going to want to come back, stay, or never leave. That vibe of curiosity, openness, maybe even a little spirituality, is threaded throughout the city. You can't talk to anybody here without learning they're a blacksmith, or they do gastronomy, or something really weird.

It's also very collaborative. People here are friendly. People brush that aside, but it's so important to live in a place where you feel welcome. You can learn something new here without feeling like people are going to look down on you for not already knowing everything about it. That's so valuable. You can become a different person here. You can grow. You can change.

What's the DNA of starting a successful niche community in Austin?

Patience is the most important thing. If you start something, it's very possible that the first time, or the second, you'll have very few people there. That's okay. Keep doing it for the love. That's why it's great to do something around something you're passionate about, because you're going to want to keep doing it anyway. Don't get discouraged if the first time doesn't go well.

Reach out to other people in the community who want to help encourage this. Reach out to people like me. We can talk about your event for you. TikTok is also great right now. It's a great place to get on and tell your story, and people will be drawn to that.

What is What's Good ATX as a platform trying to solve?

I really want to make sure people are able to discover things. You kind of already know what you're interested in, but there might be stuff out there you'd never have thought of. What's Good ATX asks you a couple of questions about yourself and recommends events accordingly. Because you're a curious person, you might find yourself interested in something like the caching community, trying to find little treasures around the city. The goal is to introduce people to things they didn't already know about but might be super into.

Loneliness really affects people, and we have to do something about it. People are trying to address it through dating apps, which is fine, and lots of folks are doing great work in that space. But we can also meet people the way we used to, around our interests. The third space concept, being part of community, joining a group you come back to every week or every month. That's how you strengthen a community.

How does the What's Good ATX app actually work?

I just did a revamp. You can find all the things happening on any given day on a map, so you can see what's near you. It keys off questions I ask up front to recommend events you might find interesting. It also has a radio, which I'm super excited about. It plays the local musicians who are out doing shows this week in Austin. You can press play, listen, and think, "That's a really good song, I want to go."

How did you grow the platform organically through Reddit?

I really believe in organic growth, because that's how you find out whether people are actually interested in what you're building. To start growing the newsletter and the app, I made another app to monitor Reddit for when people were asking about fun things to do. Then I'd jump in to help, because the newsletter literally tells you what to do every week.

The platform as a whole now has almost 10,000 users, completely organic. I still need to get it onto Facebook ads and all that, but I haven't done it yet. Organic growth is an amazing lever and you should use it as much as you can.

What's your advice for Austin business owners looking to grow in the city?

Organic is the way to go. TikTok and Instagram are both great, but you have to keep at it and be patient. I don't do it as much as I should.

Reach out to other people in the community. Lead with value. See if you can help other people, and people will want to help you back. You'll grow connections in the community, which is what's super valuable: making friends and having people in your corner rooting for you.

How can the Austin community help?

Michelle wants to connect with Austin's event hosts, creators, and community builders: event organizers, musicians, artists, makers, hobby group leaders, spiritual communities, creative business owners, workshop hosts, local venues, and anyone trying to bring people together around a shared interest. If you're trying to grow a creative business in Austin, Michelle wants to help.

Where can people learn more?

Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn and explore What's Good ATX.