Coffee Meets Bagel became one of the most memorable Shark Tank pitches after sisters Dawoon, Arum, and Soo Kang turned down Mark Cuban’s $30 million buyout offer. Luckily for the ladies, they were right to reject the deal. 10 years later, Coffee Meets Bagel is worth an estimated $150 million. An impressive valuation backed up by $36 million in annual revenue!
Update After Shark Tank
After their episode Shark Tank aired, the founders continued raising outside capital to grow the business. Over five investment rounds, they raised over $23.2 million in funding, with Atami Capital leading a $12 million Series B round in 2018.
Unfortunately, in February 2019, the site was attacked, and over 6.1 million users had their data leaked. The following year, they slowly recovered by adding a video virtual speed dating feature.
In general, CMB is struggling to attract new users in the US and compete with the likes of Hinge, Tinder and Bumble. Currently, CMB ranks within the top 15-20 most popular dating sites in America.
Coffee Meets Bagel is still relevant in parts of Asia. YouGov reported in February 2024 that 46% of dating app users in Singapore had used Coffee Meets Bagel, making it the country’s second most popular dating app. In 2025, YouGov again ranked it second in Singapore. The app has facilitated over 250 million matches and that more than 91% of its community is looking for a committed relationship.
According to Linkedin, Coffee Meets Bagel now has 72-full-time employees who all work remotely. The sisters’ ambitious revenue targets didn’t hit the heights they forecasted but CMB still makes around $36 million in annual revenue.
The dating site generates revenue through in-app purchases (“beans”) and premium subscriptions. The company is currently valued at $150 million which is expected to decrease in the future.
The Kang Sisters
Dawoon, Arum, and Soo Kang are sisters who immigrated from Korea as teenagers. In the United States, they received a top-notch education. Soo went to Harvard University, Arum attended Stanford University, and Dawoon graduated from the Parsons School of Design.
One day, the three of them talked about the difficulties of meeting people through online dating. They concluded there were more innovative ways to run a dating app that could provide better matches.
This was how they came up with Coffee Meets Bagel. The Kang siblings already had well-paying jobs, but they all decided to quit to give their idea a better chance of succeeding.
Founding Coffee Meets Bagel
The aspiring business women moved to San Francisco to get all the technical resources needed to build an online platform. In less than a year, CMB was fully developed.
After raising $600,000 from Lightbank and a co-founder of Match.com, the app officially launched in 2012. It stood out from the competition by curating users based on their Facebook data using a machine learning algorithm. Every day at noon, users are provided with potential matches.
They saw booming success as their user base and revenue grew rapidly. However, just like your typical early startup, the company struggled with cash flow and was losing a million dollars per year. Thus, its founders planned to get help from angel investors.
Pitch on Shark Tank
Dawoon, Arum, and Soo appeared on season 6 of Shark Tank in 2015. On the show, they were seeking to raise $500,000 for a 5% equity stake in their company. This valued the dating site at $10 million at the time.
This led to a tense discussion between them and the Shark Tank cast and it became one of the most iconic pitches on the series. Although many of the Sharks viewed the investment as too risky, billionaire Mark Cuban was intrigued.
Eventually, he proposed buying the entire CMB brand for $30 million, which is considered to be the largest ever cash offer on Shark Tank. However, the sisters believed the offer was too low as CMB had the potential to compete against Match.com which was making $800 million per year at the time.
