The Venture Center

As President and CEO of The Venture Center, Lee Watson and his team of experts are cultivating the next generation of entrepreneurial talent in Arkansas. Connecting people and their ideas to expert mentors in the field, this team vows to guide you from a spark of innovation to a self-sustained business.

No stranger to owning his own business, Lee founded his first successful company before ever leaving the classroom. During his senior year of college, he started Clarovista, an advertising agency focused on data analysis and mobility. Specializing in mobile apps, he began building for regional retail clients, providing them information about their clientele based on their mobile behavior and providing the retailer a way to offer a better customer service experience.

In 2006, this mobile app was one of the first of its kind built in Arkansas. After navigating his own business venture, with help along the way, Lee saw the opportunity to provide a central launching platform for entrepreneurs in the community. “Often people start businesses and don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs. They see themselves as solving a problem, ” says Lee. “Right now we are just getting started and already The Venture Center has the people, places and things that I wish existed when I graduated college.”

Known as the front door for entrepreneurship in Central Arkansas, The Venture Center began in 2014 and is based on a model of mentorship, providing the opportunity to connect the experts to first-time entrepreneurs. “The Venture Center helps provide a bridge – this is what makes it so successful: we have a plan in place to mentor,” says Steve Rice, Director of Digital Strategy and Membership. “You don’t have to be Steve Jobs to run a business.”

With more than fifteen mentors involved in the programs, these volunteers are experts in one or more categories such as funding prospects, industry, health care, information technology, marketing and more plus the mentors must have a built and sold their own company.

Have an idea? Here’s where you begin. The Venture Center offers a free Huddle Hour that will pair you with a mentor to listen to your ideas and chart a path towards creating a sustainable business model.

The company offers a Pre-Accelerator program to first-time entrepreneurs. “We’d like to have anyone who has an idea come to the venture center,” says Steve. “We’ll walk them through the center and enable them to think about how technology can scale their business.”

The program is held on Monday evenings from 6 to 9 p.m. at The Venture Center. The 14-week series is based on a national curriculum taught by Lou McAlister, founder of Broadband Development Group and Entrepreneur-In-Residence at The Venture Center. The program cost $750 for members and $1050 for a team of two, including two annual memberships.

“The Pre-Accelerator program is perfect for those with day jobs,” says Lee. “The series walks them through how to do a start up and helps determine is it going to be a good business or not? If it doesn’t work, okay, put it on the shelf, or it gives you the option to move forward.”

Within the first year of business, The Venture Center has added 155 members, hosted 11 events and program series designed for the seasoned and early-stage entrepreneur, and began 41 active startups, 25 of which have gone through the Pre-Accelerator program. They have held 200 mentor sessions, screened 53 ideas and their startups have collectively raised a $1.5 million in capital.

Lee attributes the success of The Venture Center with the team surrounding him. “It’s important to have a solid team in place, once that happens anything is possible.” With an Advisory Board and Board of Directors comprised of 15 members, a staff of five and more than 30 partners and community supporters, The Venture Center is dissolving the degrees of separation between the entrepreneur and success.

“We were very fortunate to have a great team in Arkansas,” says Lee. “So many in-state and around the country have helped pull this together.” The Little Rock Technology Park is one of the many successful partnerships with The Venture Center.

While The Venture Center is cultivating entrepreneurs’ ideas and helping to create new companies, these businesses create the need for space, utilizing the technology park as well as having a continued need for The Venture Center. “It’s the perfect example of a private and public partnership,” says Lee.

Arkansas is currently ranked 32nd in the nation for startup activity according the the Kauffman index. For the team at The Venture Center, their work is just beginning.

“Thirty to forty years ago, we had these little companies like Walmart and JB hunt, we were entrepreneurs in a time when people on the East and West coast snubbed noses at fly over states,” says Lee.  “If we did it then, we can do it again, we’ll look back and see entrepreneurs thriving. Little Rock will be a hub for technology-based business.”

For more information about The Venture Center call 501.404.9875 or visit www.venturecenter.co.