People were searching for local businesses and finding somebody else.

That’s what Starling Franco kept seeing, around the time COVID hit.

Where it started

He was working part time at Dunkirk City Hall, helping set up Small Business Saturday in the old JCPenney building in the D&F Plaza. That meant looking up the local businesses taking part.

The service was incredible. The online side was a mess.

There was no website. The hours on Google were wrong. Phone numbers didn’t ring anymore. And with doors closing everywhere, online was the only place people could look.

It bothered him that good businesses were losing work over something fixable.

A few years later, he started Moovlin.

But the tech started way before that. At nine, he was fixing his neighbors’ computers and modems. By middle school he was building websites, and he never stopped.

Then the work started speaking for itself

The first few months of Moovlin weren’t glamorous. There was a lot of free work, and a lot of conversations about why being found online matters.

Then the work started speaking for itself.

Bella Vista Campground in Kennedy was the first to sign on, and they’re still with Moovlin today.

Angel Natal has been pouring concrete around Jamestown for twenty seven years. Today, when someone searches concrete construction in Jamestown, Natal Concrete Construction comes up first. Same work. Same crew. Now the people searching can find him. Read Angel’s story.

That’s the story behind every Moovlin client. Towing companies, body shops, contractors, campgrounds, architects, nonprofits. Real work for real people. They just needed to be found.

Getting found, and staying found

Starling loves Western New York and wants to see it thrive. But too many good businesses here still run on word of mouth alone.

Word of mouth still matters. But a new generation of customers is coming up. They grew up in a digital world, and they don’t always ask around first. They pull out their phone and search. The businesses that will serve them are the ones that show up there.

And getting found is only half of it. Staying found is the other half. Google keeps showing the businesses that stay active and relevant. The ones that go quiet slowly slip out of sight.

There are no contracts, and nothing is outsourced. The person who builds your website is the person who picks up the phone.

It started with a search that came up empty. Now it’s making sure the next one doesn’t.

Want your business to be the one people find? Talk to Moovlin →