FRANCESCO VITALI – CEO Co Founder of RENT A CYBER FRIEND
When TechCrunch unveiled its 2025 Startup Battlefield 200, the announcement carried more than the usual weight. For two decades, TechCrunch Disrupt has been the stage where innovation meets destiny — a launchpad that has given the world companies like Dropbox, Trello, and Cloudflare. Out of thousands of global applicants this year, only two hundred were chosen. Among them is Rent A Cyber Friend, a company not chasing trends or vanity metrics, but reimagining what technology itself is meant to serve.
For Francesco Vitali, Co-Founder and CEO, the honor is both humbling and transformative. “Disrupt is where the world looks to see what’s next,” he says. “To be included is not only a privilege, but also a responsibility. It means the issues we are raising — about loneliness, dignity, and presence — now belong at the very center of the global technology conversation.”
The Hidden Pandemic
The urgency is undeniable. In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness a public health epidemic, warning that its effect on mortality rivals smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. It weakens immunity, accelerates dementia, and increases the risk of early death. It is not confined to one group — it affects teenagers glued to their screens, single parents carrying their burdens in silence, older adults quietly eating alone.
Technology, ironically, has amplified the problem. Social media encourages performance, not honesty. AI chatbots simulate companionship, but only remind us of what’s missing: the irreplaceable presence of another person. What was meant to connect us has often left us more alone.
The Inversion
Rent A Cyber Friend enters here as an inversion of that story. The platform does not ask people to perfect themselves or to sell a polished version of who they are. It asks them only to show up. A Cyber Friend is not an avatar, not a bot, not a performance — it is a human being offering their time and attention.
That simple act has proven magnetic. More than 2.6 million registered users and counting have already embraced the idea. And for many, it is more than connection — it is also work. Single parents, people with mobility challenges, older adults with untapped energy: all can contribute and earn through presence itself. It is not charity. It is dignity, restored through technology.
The Human Connection Economy
Vitali calls this vision the Human Connection Economy. For too long, he argues, people have been treated as the product — their data mined, their attention sold. Rent A Cyber Friend turns that logic upside down. Here, the person is the value. Presence itself is the contribution.
To describe this bold shift, the company uses the phrase HaaS — Human as a Service. It is not about commodifying people. It is about elevating them. “Every person has value just by showing up,” Vitali says. “Technology should not erase us; it should make us matter more.”
Preparing for San Francisco
The anticipation around TechCrunch Disrupt is immense. Investors, journalists, and founders from around the world will converge in San Francisco for three days of ideas, pitches, and breakthroughs. To stand on that stage is to join a lineage of companies that have defined the last twenty years of the internet.
For Vitali, the moment is not about bravado but about gratitude. “To present at Disrupt is a privilege,” he says. “We’re not just showcasing what we built. We’re adding to a tradition — one that has always been about what technology can become. For us, that means reminding the world that the future belongs to people.”
The Declaration
When the lights rise this October, Rent A Cyber Friend will not be unveiling a gadget or a line of code. It will be presenting something rarer: a manifesto for presence. A vision that says connection is not a feature to be engineered, but a birthright to be restored.
The company’s message is clear. The next great disruption is not artificial intelligence, but authentic humanity. It is not avatars or algorithms, but We the People. It is not about making humans perform for technology, but about making technology honor humans.
And as Francesco Vitali takes the stage in San Francisco, the words that close will not be marketing. They will be a reminder — to the industry, to the audience, to the world:
“The future is not AI. The future is Humans.”
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