Middlesbrough goalkeeper Victor Valdes is looking to be the man of the matchmaking.
Tramontana Ventures, an incubator founded by the tech entrepreneur Valdes, has launched the Hola Dating app that helps users who come across an attractive stranger to say hello, flirt and strike up a conversation.
“We think that in the dating world, you can feel attracted to someone whether you are on the bus, on the metro, in university, in the cafe, in the club,” Valdes said in Spanish in a social media video that introduces the app.
“If you see someone you have an attraction but you don’t necessarily have the courage to approach them and don’t know how to initiate a conversation, I think there’s a tool that we need for this and by taking advantage of our mobile phones we can create a visual code based on a colour and on the message ‘Hola.'”
The 34-year-old Spaniard launches the app on his phone, and it flashes “hola!” while showing a brownish orange color screen that is meant to be shown to the stranger.
“That person can search for me and my profile picture thanks to the color I’ve shown them,” Valdes said. “So then, we can start a conversation in a private channel.”
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Valdes is a veteran of having appeared in more than 500 matches for FC Barcelona and has since moved to the English Premier League and signed a two-year contract with Middlesbrough.
Looking to enable users to score in the romance department, Valdes has the app being tested at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and made available on the App Store and Google Play.
Nuevo Proyecto @holaDating test en @UAB_info durante estos días
Saludos!!#hola! #innovation pic.twitter.com/co4A59P0EQ
— Victor Valdes (@1victorvaldes) September 28, 2016