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Ask HN: Early stage Founders – How do you acquire early beta users?
I have tried Reddit, Insta, Product HUnt but not much traction. Any suggestions?
Zenera is that research organized into something actually usable. It's not perfect, coverage is limited, and the UI is rough. But it has the kind of specific intel I desperately wanted when planning my first Delhi trip - and couldn't find anywhere. This is a solo project built between my day job in marketing. No fancy funding, no team, just me and a lot of spreadsheets. If you've solo traveled Delhi or Bangalore and want to contribute your experience, or if you find something wrong in the data, please reach out. This only works if it's accurate and community-driven.
Last year I was planning a solo trip and got so frustrated with vague warnings that I almost canceled. Then I realized - these articles aren't written by people who've actually solo traveled there recently. They're just recycling generic advice.
So I started going through actual accounts from solo travelers - Reddit posts, YouTube comments, Google Maps reviews. The detailed "I stayed in Hauz Khas alone and here's what happened" experiences. I spent 4 months analyzing 1000+ reports for Delhi and Bangalore.
What I found: safety is extremely neighborhood and time-dependent. Hauz Khas Village scores 4.5/5 during daytime (cafes, solo women everywhere), then drops to 2.5/5 after 9 PM (club-heavy, different vibe entirely). Same exact spot.
I built Zenera (https://app.zenera.fun/) to organize this data: time-based safety scores (1-5 scale), bystander intervention culture (will locals actually help if you're uncomfortable), solo-specific incident patterns, community-verified spots, peak solo hours.
Current coverage: Delhi and Bangalore neighborhoods. Planning to expand to more cities based on data availability.
How it works: No signup, just browse. Search a neighborhood, see safety scores at different times, read what other solo travelers experienced, check bystander culture ratings.
What's different: Most travel safety apps give generic city-level advice or focus on emergency features. Zenera provides neighborhood-level intel with time-based context - the kind of specificity I desperately wanted when planning trips but couldn't find anywhere.
Known issues: UI is rough, mobile experience needs work, data coverage is limited to two cities, some neighborhoods have sparse data. This is very much beta.
What I'm looking for: Feedback on usefulness vs noise. Am I solving a real problem or just feeding my own anxiety with spreadsheets? Is time-based data actually helpful or too granular? What's missing?
Also open to technical feedback - current architecture is simple but wondering about scaling as I add more cities and real-time data.
Happy to answer questions about the data collection methodology, scoring formula, or why I chose this weird tech stack.