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

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; they ran 48FILM, an international short film festival (Vitali is also a film producer). So he took a leap of faith to trust…