Inuvo, PrivacyStar to relocate to Little Rock's downtown

 Inuvo Chairman and CEO Richard Howe speaks to a reporter after a press conference at the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, April 9, 2015.
Inuvo Chairman and CEO Richard Howe speaks to a reporter after a press conference at the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, April 9, 2015.

Conway-based tech companies Inuvo and PrivacyStar jointly announced at a Thursday news conference at the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce their plans to relocate to Little Rock’s River Market District.

Digital publishing and advertising technology firm Inuvo signed a five-year lease for office space in the Museum Center building at 500 President Clinton Ave.

The majority of Inuvo’s 53 employees will relocate to the third floor’s 13,000 square-foot offices in early fall, the company said.

Inuvo has undergone significant growth since moving to Arkansas from New York in 2013, Inuvo Chairman and CEO Richard Howe said.

“In Arkansas we have seen an incredible reception to our business,” Howe said, crediting the success to the talent pool in the state. “We had the best year the company has ever had in 2014,” Howe said, adding that the company made revenue of $50 million a year.

Both Inuvo and PrivacyStar are currently housed in the same building at 1111 Main St. in Conway.

PrivacyStar, a smartphone app that blocks unwanted calls and allows users to perform reverse phone lookup searches, will also make the move to the Museum Center, on the second floor.

“We are very much like Inuvo, we need good technology workers,” PrivacyStar Chairman and CEO Charles Morgan said. “We have a lot of programing and tech problems to solve and the kind of people that we’ve been able to find in Arkansas have done a fabulous job.”

Morgan said the company has added 30-40 jobs in the past 12 months, and he expects that kind of growth in the future.

Morgan, who is also a Inuvo board member, said the two companies are striving to create a tech-friendly environment in the River Market District.

The relocation of the two companies and signals advancement for the city, helping central Arkansas morph into more of an innovation hub, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola said.

“These businesses could go anywhere,” Stodola said. “They could be in the Silicon Valley, they could be, you know, at South by South West in Austin, they could be in Charlotte, they could be in Winston-Salem, but they chose to be here.”

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