Brendan Alper hopes to find some love in the Shark Tank when he pitches Hater, a dating app that matches people based on what they hate, in episode 909. Alper is a former Goldman Sachs financial guy who turned to comedy writing when he realized finance wasn’t his cup of tea. The idea for Hater initially was a joke, but he soon realized it was based in real psychology.
A 2006 study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin argued that “people readily connect when they have a third entity to jointly demean.” Armed with an idea and a bit of academic proof, Alper made his app into a Tinder-like product that asks people to swipe up or down for “love” or “hate,” and right or left for “like” or “dislike.”
Subject matter on the app ranges from politics to celebrities to food, sports and more. The app does not use or approve of hate speech in any way. There are over 3000 topics in the app – chosen by the Hater team – and frequently include trending topics. Once you swipe your “hate,” “loves,” etc, the app matches you with folks that have similar interests and it uses an algorithm to calculate compatibility. After that, it works like other dating apps, allowing users to view matches and choose who they’d like to meet.
Hater debuted just before Valentine’s Day, 2017 and rocketed to over 200,000 users. Whether it stands the test of time remains to be seen, but a Shark’s capital and cache is something Mr.