Spotlight: Startup Village & Lance Ding

For founders, community is a critical resource that helps them navigate the murky waters of entrepreneurship.

Peak Digital Studio recently had the pleasure of working with Lance Ding, founder of Startup Village, to build their website for their LA-focused community, connecting founders with the right resources and people to help them along their journey.

Learn about Lance’s entrepreneurial journey, why he startedStartup Village, and how he worked with Peak to turn his website vision into reality.

Building Community with Startup Village

Lance is no stranger to launching things, having started a startup and an agency while still a student.

Lance's latest endeavor is community building. As a UCLA student, he noticed that for a top university, it lacked a serious startup community that you find at places like USC, Stanford, Berkeley, 

The lack of support for founders led him to start Startup Village, a community initially for current and former UCLA students but now for the greater Los Angeles startup community. Lance carefully vets members to ensure everyone who joins brings something to the table as a founder or investor and is serious about their enterprise, and has value to contribute to the community.

This focus creates an environment for founders and VCs to build genuine connections and access valuable resources. With over 100 members, Startup Village fosters a serious entrepreneurship culture. Startup Village achieves this through thoughtful events, network connections, and content that aims to help founders at every step of their journey.

“We have an active and engaged network. So, as soon as someone joins, they get introduced 5-10 founders and mentors that helps solve their most immediate need.”

Collaboration with Peak Digital Agency

Lance likes to sell before he builds, and Bruin Startup Village was no different. He established the community first and focused on providing them value, before launching into building a website. However, like any other venture, you eventually need a home on the web where prospective customers, or in Lance’s case members, can find you and understand more about what you offer.

As a creative himself, Lance designed a concept for the Startup Village website in Figma but realized he didn’t have the bandwidth to build the full site in Webflow himself. So, he turned to freelancers.

Lance hired a couple people before Peak, but he realized they wouldn’t be able to deliver a quality product in his required time frame. After an initial conversation with the Peak team, he handed us one page to see if we could get what he needed to be done quickly and to the quality he expected.

After building that page, Lance knew Peak was perfect for the job and handed the rest of the project over to us. He appreciates our over-communication and transparency, which helps manage expectations and facilitate a smoother project flow.

“I appreciate that Peak communicates very very well. Many contractors that I hire just say the bare minimum to make the founder feel confident, even though behind the scenes, it may not be going too well. So having a level of transparency is really valuable.”

Impact of the New Website:

The website we developed for Startup Village has significantly aided in community engagement and visibility. It allows prospective members to view who is already a part of the community. People spend a lot of time researching current community members and upcoming events.

If you’re interested in kicking off your project with Peak, book a meeting with us today!