Product Update
Is Hater Still in Business? (2026 Update)
Is Hater from Shark Tank still around in 2026? The deal it made, the sharks who invested, and where to buy Hater today.
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Hater built its entire pitch on a clever inversion of every dating app before it: match people by what they mutually can't stand, instead of what they claim to love. Mark Cuban bought in on the spot. The app is gone now, and it has been gone for years, which makes this one of the cleaner defunct stories in the Shark Tank catalog to document.
The Short Answer
No, Hater is not still in business. The app was shut down years ago and is no longer available to download on any platform. If you remember installing it around 2017 or 2018, that memory is as current as this product gets.
This is not a case of ambiguous signals or conflicting reports. The shutdown is well documented and dated.
The Shark Tank Pitch
Founder Brendan Alper pitched Hater in Season 9, Episode 12, based out of New York. He asked for 200,000 dollars for 5 percent equity, a confident 4 million dollar valuation for an app that, at the time, was still a fairly small player in an already crowded dating category dominated by giants with far deeper marketing budgets than a bootstrapped startup could match.
The Deal That Got Done
Mark Cuban made the deal, investing 200,000 dollars for 10 percent equity, double the stake Alper had originally offered. Cuban has a long history of backing app based businesses, and Hater's pitch, built around a genuinely different matching mechanic instead of another swipe clone, was the kind of idea that fit his taste for a differentiated product in a saturated market.
The bet made sense at the time. Dating apps that find a real hook tend to get a burst of downloads from press coverage alone, and a Shark Tank appearance functions as exactly that kind of press hit.
The Rise and the Quiet Shutdown
The burst came. Hater reportedly crossed a million downloads in its first year, a strong number for a niche dating app riding one national TV appearance. For a stretch, it looked like Cuban's bet was paying off in exactly the way these Shark Tank dating app deals are supposed to. The app's central hook, matching people over shared dislikes rather than shared interests, was novel enough to generate its own press coverage independent of the Shark Tank exposure, which is exactly the kind of earned media a small app needs to compete against dating giants with far bigger marketing budgets.
It did not hold. Engagement declined sharply after the initial download spike, a familiar trap for apps that win attention but struggle to keep users coming back once the novelty of the matching gimmick wears off. A negativity based hook is a strong first date, but a weaker foundation for the kind of daily habit apps like Tinder and Hinge had already built into millions of users' routines. Without meaningful profit or a growing active user base to point to, Hater shut down in June 2019, a little over two years after Cuban's investment closed. The company never found a way to convert curiosity clicks into a habit, and once the download numbers stopped growing, there was nothing underneath them to sustain the business.
Hater net worth in 2026
There is no credible net worth figure to report for Hater in 2026, because there is no company left to value. The app has been offline since its June 2019 shutdown, with no relaunch, acquisition, or rebrand documented anywhere since.
Any site claiming a specific current dollar valuation for Hater is not working from real information. The honest number here is zero, and it has been zero for roughly seven years.
Where Things Stand Now
Hater pitched in Season 9 out of New York, asked for 200,000 dollars for 5 percent, and closed with Mark Cuban at 10 percent. The app crossed a million downloads in its first year, then lost momentum as engagement dropped and profit never materialized, shutting down completely in June 2019.
If you are searching for this app today hoping to install it, stop looking. It does not exist anymore, and it has not existed for the better part of a decade.
Where to buy Hater
Still selling as of March 21, 2026. Check today's price and availability.
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See the full Hater deal breakdown and term sheet →
