Been building Yenta for about a year now. The core idea: you text your vibe on WhatsApp, "something low-key, good cocktails, not a tourist trap," and get back three specific recommendations that actually match. No app, no account, just a message. We're live in Dubai with around 500 users and gearing up for a Mexico City launch. The biggest challenge we keep running into is explaining what it is without making it sound like a chatbot or a Google Maps clone, which it isn't. Curious if anyone here has navigated that positioning problem with a product that sits in a category that doesn't quite exist yet.
We noticed something that kept bothering us: finding the right place to eat had somehow gotten harder, not easier.
Every recommendation platform had quietly been gamed, restaurants paying for placement, reviews written by agencies, "best of" lists recycled year after year. Locals knew it. Visitors just got burned.
So instead of building another app, we built Yenta, an AI friend on WhatsApp. You text your vibe ("rooftop, something buzzing, not a tourist trap"), and it responds like a friend who actually knows the city.
We go live May 15th. Waitlist is open at https://tr.ee/gOPXT4QG7R A couple of things we're genuinely wrestling with would love to hear from this community:
