# The Venture Center

> The Venture Center is a VC fund backing Financial Services and FinTech. See 5 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Little Rock, United States
- Total investments: 5
- Last investment: Aug 2023
- Lead investor: 20%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/arkansas-venture-center
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/VentureCenter
- Website: http://www.venturecenter.co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheVentureCenter/

The Venture Center is an early-stage startup acceleration and investment firm. They help startups scale revenues through systematic programming, premium mentorship, and strategic acceleration with an eye on reaching scale and creating measurable economic impact.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for The Venture Center. Shizune tracks 2 team members at The Venture Center. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-team-emails/the-venture-center?utm_source=investor_profile

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Financial Services | 4 | 80% |
| FinTech | 3 | 60% |
| Information Technology | 2 | 40% |
| Finance | 1 | 20% |
| Payments | 1 | 20% |

13 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 2 | 40% |
| Series A | 1 | 20% |
| Non-equity Assistance | 1 | 20% |
| Venture - Series Unknown | 1 | 20% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 2 | 40% |
| Canada | 1 | 20% |
| Mexico | 1 | 20% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 20% |

## Team

| Name | Title | Investments | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lee Watson | Founder | 0 | — |
| Mimi San Pedro | Chief Strategy Officer | 0 | — |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Forage | Forage is a third-party payment processor (TPP) and a pin provider that authenticates and processes EBT recipients and transactions. Forage makes it easier for grocers to accept SNAP EBT payments online. Forage guides merchants through the USDA application process and tech integration for merchants, taking most of the burden off retailers.Foragedemocratizes access to government benefits and helps underserved Americans easily access their benefits online. Forage works with multiple grocers and platforms such as Shopify and Flashfood to accept SNAP EBT payments online. |  | Non-equity Assistance | Aug 15, 2023 |  |
| Beauceron Security | Beauceron makes it faster, easier and less complex for organisations to measure, manage and monitor human-centric cyber risk. Their comprehensive, automated cybersecurity platform covers cybersecurity education, social engineering simulations, executive surveys, and dashboards as well as business process, and technology gap assessment and analysis. | $3.1M | Venture - Series Unknown | Jun 01, 2022 |  |
| Billon Group | Billon Group is a fintech company that provides an enterprise DLT system for accounts and transactions and targets at bank accounts. The technology is optimized for regulated institutional use as a scalable private, permission DLT (outperforming cryptocurrency adaptations). It is fully regulatory compliant for both money and document applications.Billon offers near real-time settlement of domestic and cross border payments. It also enables fiat money to be digitized and the firm is registered as an e-money issuer in the UK and Poland. The partners with enterprise customers to create DLT based solutions on it’s a full platform. Reusable modules & APIs allow for rapid creation and delivery. The platform combines the blockchain and distributed ledger is built for enterprise implementations and achieved full compliance with data and money regulations.Billon Group was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in London, England, United Kingdom. | $5.5M | Series A | Mar 19, 2020 |  |
| BOND.AI | BOND.AI is a human-centered AI platform for banks, powered by its proprietary empathy engine. It helps banks intimately understand user behavior and nudge them towards improving financial health. BOND.AI significantly increases user engagement, lifetime customer value and most importantly helps monetize data for financial institutions. | $2.7M | Seed | Aug 28, 2017 |  |
| Quotanda | Quotanda is a lending as a service (LaaS) platform providing a suite of student loan services. Quotanda technology enables organizations (lenders, schools, institutions, foundations and communities) to quickly introduce affordable education loan programs in any country and currency in a matter of days without the need to hire additional resources.Quotanda technology and staff take care of all aspects of partners’ online lending programs, including: program set-up, marketing, compliance, origination, automated credit decisions, loan disbursement, extended servicing (collecting interest and principal), and default management. |  | Seed | Sep 24, 2015 |  |

5 of 5 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [FIS](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/fis) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Access Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/access-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [BankTech Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/banktech-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Fenway Summer Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/fenway-summer-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- Fund for Arkansas' Future — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Independent Community Bankers of America](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/independent-community-bankers-of-america) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## Similar investors

### Similar stage
- [Antler](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/antler-be9c) — VC Fund
- [Alumni Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alumni-ventures-group) — VC Fund
- [Right Side Capital Management](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/right-side-capital-management) — VC Fund

## FAQ

### What does The Venture Center invest in?

The Venture Center invests primarily in Financial Services, FinTech and Information Technology startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 5 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### How do I contact The Venture Center?

Public channels for The Venture Center include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.

### Who are the partners at The Venture Center?

The team at The Venture Center includes Lee Watson (Founder) and Mimi San Pedro (Chief Strategy Officer). The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

# About Shizune
Shizune.co is an investor database. Core features:
- 48,091 startup investors (angels, VCs, accelerators, and others)
- Email, phone, LinkedIn (for intros), socials, and other contact data
- Updated daily from public funding news
- CSV and Excel export

The User can access the full database FOR FREE after signing up: shizune.co