Hater, an app for finding someone who dislikes the same things as you, to expand beyond dating
Not a fan of Trump? Can’t stand country music? Think selfie culture is the worst? Wouldn’t go camping if someone paid you? Bonding over the things you hate can be more powerful than bonding over what you like, studies have shown.
Explains Hater founder and CEO Brendan Alper, the idea for the app came up around a year and a half ago, but he hadn’t envisioned it as being a real product at the time.
Instead, Alper, a former Goldman Sachs employee, had left the banking biz to pursue his passion in writing comedy. Hater was originally going to be a part of an online comedy sketch he was planning to publish. But the more he talked about it, the more it seemed like the app might actually have real appeal, he says.
“It was just in the idea phase. At first I told some people about it – mostly people I was writing comedy with,” says Alper. Everyone had the same reaction: “‘That makes so much sense. It’s really funny, but why doesn’t that exist?’,” he explains. “It really got my gears turning.”
“I had always wanted to start my own company…It was kind of this viral idea, but it needed a product that could back it up,” Alper adds.
While Hater’s focus is on dislikes, it’s not the only dating app trying to suss out more information about its users’ personalities as a means of differentiating itself from the hot-or-not, photo-driven apps like Tinder and Bumble. (more…)