Francesco Vitali will be the first to admit that he didn’t fully understand the idea of Rent a Cyber Friend when his co-founder Chris Siametis first pitched it to him.
“Who would pay to talk to someone?” Vitali told TechCrunch. “But Chris was stubborn. Chris is a Millennial and I’m a Gen Xer, so it wasn’t easy to understand his vision.”
Vitali worked with Siametis for about 20 years. They ran the international short film festival 48FILM (Vitali is also a film producer). So he took a leap of faith and trusted his collaborators with an idea he couldn’t shake: a video chat platform where people could pay by the minute to have casual conversations with their “cyber friends.”
Rent a Cyber Friend grew to 3 million registered users without raising venture capital or spending money on marketing. The company doesn’t even have social media. This is because they are understaffed and cannot devote resources to social media. The startup is part of Startup Battlefield and will be presenting at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in San Francisco later this month.
The company’s rapid growth proved Vitali’s initial reaction wrong, but as he used the product himself, he began to realize that there was a huge market for human connection, especially in an era when people were paying to talk to AI bots.
“Loneliness is the biggest disease in the world right now,” Vitali said. “Millions of people are feeling lonely, underemployed or looking for purpose. So we built a platform where human time is valued again, and a place where being human matters.”
Cyberfriends are first vetted to verify their identity, and then they can set their conversation rates by the minute. The platform retains 20% of that fee. It’s not just friendships that people are paying for. Some cyberfriends charge higher fees if they are academics or vetted experts in a particular field, or speak a particular language that the user wants to practice.
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Safety and content management are challenges for social media platforms, especially those that connect people through real-time video chat. Vitali points out that the platform has blocking capabilities, but as the company continues to grow, further investment will be required to maintain a healthy environment. Next on the product roadmap, he said, is a more robust and efficient system for vetting potential cyberfriends more quickly and thoroughly.
A turning point for Vitali came shortly after the company was founded, when he contacted a 19-year-old boy from China. He noticed that this person was one of the most active users on the site and spent $200 a day talking to people. Vitali manipulated the site to make himself the only cyberfriend and took the opportunity to ask users about their experiences without disclosing that he founded the company.
“He said, ‘It’s not safe to go out to the mall and meet strangers, but this site gives you the possibility to exchange cultures and meet people from all over the world.’ That was the first moment I realized there was something here,” Vitali recalls.
I still believe that the connections between people are irreplaceable. But on an internet where people are drawn into addictive and dangerous connections with AI chatbots designed to maximize engagement, this step toward humanity makes sense to him.
If you want to learn more about Rent a Cyber Friend from the company itself, check out dozens of other companies, hear their pitches, and hear from guest speakers on four different stages, join us at Disrupt in San Francisco from October 27th to 29th. Click here for more information.
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