A new company called Invisible Girlfriend is hoping to take the stress out of another year of telling friends and relatives that no, you still have not found a significant other.
Those who have been unlucky in love can turn to the service for actual texts, phone calls, voicemails, and gifts to make it seem like they are half of a happy couple.
Creator Matt Homann explained to BuzzFeed there are a handful of reasons users might want to lie about having a girlfriend.
"Our audience might come from a variety of situations: maybe they're in a same-sex relationship they're hiding from disapproving relatives, are trying to avoid the unwelcome advances from a coworker, or have chosen to focus on their work instead of romance," he says.
Though the service likely won't be available until Christmas, the company plans to expand into offering an Invisible Boyfriend (and both will be LGBT friendly).
"This is the business of helping [clients] tell a lie — we're thinking of it more as a shield — to have the excuse ready in hand and not have to be uncomfortable," Homann told the Riverfront Times. "It's lightweight but credible social proof."
The company is still brand new, though Homann purchased InvisibleGirlfriend.com at 3 a.m. more than three years ago, calling it a "drunk domain" -- paying $7 for it with no clue if he would ever utilize it.
That was until the recent Startup Weekend competition in St. Louis, where Homann made a last-minute decision to pitch the idea. He quickly amassed a ten-person team, put the website, prototype and business model together in two days, and won first place.
The girlfriend may be fake, but single guys still have to choose how much they want to spend on her — from $9.99 for the "Just Talking" package, including an "emergency interaction button," up to $49.99 for the "Almost Engaged."
The app will enable users to have "real-time text conversations with their 'girlfriends,'" Homann said, adding that they're exploring whether phone calls will be live actors or "realistic computer-generated voicemails."
