Brendan Alper's mom isn't very happy with him right now.
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The 29-year-old founder of ‘Hater,’ one of the hottest new dating apps, says he’s gotten death threats after a big marketing stunt in New York City
Former Goldman Sachs banker and comedy writer Brendan Alper built an app called "Hater," which connects people based on their mutual dislikes.
Brendan Alper, founder and CEO of Hater
The 29-year-old founder of Hater, a dating app that connects people based on mutual dislikes, recently took something of a risk: His company created an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin caressing a pregnant Donald Trump and projected it on buildings throughout New York City.
The advertisement got some laughs, but it also inspired internet backlash. Alper has a handful of death threats sitting in his Facebook inbox, and has decided against heading to an upcoming tech conference in Moscow, Russia.
But Alper mostly laughs off the internet backlash and the concerns that Russia might be displeased with his company's handiwork.
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There's science behind it
Hater is Alper's first foray into the startup world. The former banker spent five years at Goldman Sachs and one and a half more at Nomura, but he never really loved what he was doing.
The idea for Hater started as one of those sketches. Wouldn't it be funny, he thought, if there was a dating app for bonding over things you don't like?
Getting creative with monetization
Hater works by supplying users with close to 3,000 topics to rate by swiping one of four ways: up to love, right to like, left to dislike, and down to hate.
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By letting the app know how you feel about those topics, you're creating a profile that gets compared to the profiles of other users. You're then matched with other users based on the things you both hate or love.
Alper is also excited about selling Hater-inspired merchandise (which he says some enterprising fans have already started doing on their own using the pregnant Trump image), though he admits it's an unconventional way of trying to make money as a startup.
'It's about empathy'
It's those types of stories that make Alper realize he's onto something, he says. While he knew that naming the app Hater and zeroing in on pessimism might earn him some animosity, it would at least get people talking. Besides, he says, the app isn't even really about hate.
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