Over the years, we’ve seen countless products come and go on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” from mosquito bite relief to the CoinOut app and even a clothing app that measures your body using your camera. But back in 2016, a 16-year-old girl named Trisha Prabhu appeared on “Shark Tank” seeking an investment for her start-up ReThink. The mobile app had been designed from the ground up to detect abusive language and bullying as it was typed. The point of the app was to force users to “rethink” the hurtful messages that they might be about to send by hitting them with a prompt when it detected anything hateful. It was a novel idea, one that saw some skepticism from several Sharks.
Most of the skepticism came from the fact that many weren’t convinced that it could actually be a scalable business. The consumer-facing version of ReThink was meant to be free to users, while the real money was going to be made through partnerships with schools and other large-scale operations like mobile carriers. Despite the skepticism, though, Prabhu managed to make a deal with two of the Sharks before walking away from the show. It’s been quite some time since Prabhu walked off “Shark Tank” with a deal, and yet ReThink seems to be mostly quiet, especially if you look at the app’s pages on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. So, whatever happened to ReThink after its appearance on “Shark Tank?” Here’s what we know.
Walking away with a deal that didn’t stick
When Prabhu appeared on “Shark Tank” back in 2016, the young entrepreneur approached the Sharks, offering up just 20% of her startup for a $100,000 investment. There were obvious questions about the viability of the app — like why bullies would ever install an app like this on their phones and what would stop the bullies from just pushing through the prompt anyway. Prabhu said the target of the app wasn’t the bullies themselves, but their parents, schools, and even potentially the mobile carriers those kids used, as the carriers could preinstall the app on phones that were sold through their stores. Additionally, Prabhu claimed a small study of roughly 1,500 people showed that 93% of teens took the app’s advice when it detected abusive language.
Even with the skepticism over the app’s viability to make money, Prabhu ended up walking away with a joint deal between Mark Cuban — who believed that he could make deals for the app with some carriers — and Lori Greiner. She was the first to offer Prabhu exactly what she was looking for. The two Sharks went in together on the original offer; however, it never officially closed. Shark Robert Herjavec says this isn’t unexpected, as only “about 50% of deals close.” This is due to the deals being simply verbal, and all final decisions are made after the fact.
What happened to ReThink after Shark Tank?
Since appearing on “Shark Tank,” ReThink has continued to grow as an idea, and Prabhu has grown up significantly, continuing her journey as a social entrepreneur and a global advocate against bullying. ReThink has also expanded from being a simple idea with a mobile app to becoming a patented technology that has been made available to various youth-oriented clubs and events. In 2021 alone, the company’s system expanded to 70+ Rotary Clubs in 18 different Caribbean countries.
Over the years, Prabhu has continued to push her message about ending bullying, appearing in Ted Talks and even writing a book titled “ReThink The Internet,” which she published through Penguin Random House in 2022. The company has also received different grants over the years, helping it expand significantly, with ReThink Citizens — a nonprofit offshoot of the company — launching in 2023 on a mission to help end online bullying and hate.
As for the apps that helped start it all, the Google Play version appears to have received an update of some sort in October 2025, though exactly what changed isn’t shared anywhere that we could find. The iOS version hasn’t received an update since 2023, and the apps have 3.5- and three-star ratings, respectively, with most of the latest reviews on the apps being at least a few years old now.
