First built in 2015.
Almost forgotten.
Back now.
In April 2015, our founder Ali launched Zeus Alert — a one-tap personal safety app that pinged your trusted contacts with your live location the moment you tapped the screen. It was covered by Newswire, listed on iTunes and Google Play, and pitched to investors that year.
Zeus reached 1,500 users on a solo budget. No team. No funding. No PR machine. Just a Chicago founder building from scratch.
In October 2016, an app called Vigilante launched in New York with the same core concept — one-tap alerts, location broadcast, real-time community awareness. It was pulled from the App Store within days for concerns it encouraged vigilantism. The following March, it relaunched under a new name: Citizen. It has since raised over $100 million from Sequoia, Founders Fund, Greycroft and others — and reached more than five million users.
Ali shut Zeus down that same year. The math was simple: a solo founder cannot out-compete a venture-backed competitor in the same category. The only sane move was to stop, save what was left, and live to build again.
What happens between an investor pitch and another founder's product launch is something we'll never know. We're not making accusations. We're noting the timeline.
Ten years later, the founder returned. With AI, modern infrastructure, and a refusal to gatekeep the panic button behind a paywall, Zeus is being rebuilt — and this time, we're keeping it.