Rent a Cyber Friend will pay you to talk to strangers online and will show off its platform at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Summary

Francesco Vitali will be the first to admit that when his co-founder Chris Siametis first pitched him on Rent a Cyber Friend, he didn’t quite get the idea. “Who’s going to pay somebody to speak with somebody?” Vitali told TechCrunch. “But Chris was insistent. Chris is a millennial, and I’m Gen X, so it wasn’t easy for me to understand his vision.” Vitali had worked with Siametis for about two decades together; they ran 48FILM, an international short film festival (Vitali is also a film producer). So, he took a leap of faith to trust his collaborator on the idea he couldn’t shake: a video chat platform where people can pay per minute for a casual conversation with a “cyber friend.” Rent a Cyber Friend ballooned to 3 million registered users without raising venture capital or spending any money on marketing. The company doesn’t even have social media because it’s too short-staffed to devote resources to it. The startup is part of Startup Battlefield, and will be presenting at TechCrunch Disrupt at the end of this month in San Francisco. The company’s fast growth proved Vitali’s first reactions wrong, but as he used the product himself, he began to realize that there’s a big market for human connection — especially in a time when people are paying to talk to AI bots. “Loneliness is the biggest disease in the world right now,” Vitali said. “Millions are lonely, and they are underemployed or seeking purpose. So, we built a platform where human time has value again, and a place where being human is important.” Cyber friends are first vetted to verify their identity, and then they can set a per-minute rate to charge for their conversations; the platform keeps 20% of that fee. People aren’t just paying for companionship. Some cyber friends charge a higher rate if they’re an academic or vetted expert in a specific subject area, or if they speak a particular language that a user would like to practice. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 For any social media ...