Registration is now open for "Do It Today Vol.5," a workshop co-hosted by FreeS Fund.

Registration is now open for the fifth installment of Lightstream Lab's "Do It Today" offline event, co-hosted by FreeS Fund.

This session will be a joint effort between Lightstream Lab, FreeS Fund, and Zhiren.

At the last event, Lightstream Lab shared their framework for integrating Marketing with product development, and walked participants through hands-on exercises using "Value Proposition" — the starting point of the entire product lifecycle — to understand how Marketing can get involved from the very first product idea and play a role throughout the product's entire lifecycle. The response was overwhelmingly positive. If you missed the last one, we welcome you to sign up for this month's Workshop.

This Workshop will continue from the previous session's theme, How Marketing Integrates with Product — Our Thinking from Wandoujia, Lightstream, and Qingmang. Lightstream will add more industry case studies to share: the core tasks and methodology of highly integrated Marketing throughout the product lifecycle, how we think about product promotion and brand building, and we'll work together to complete a real product's value positioning using the Value Proposition Canvas method.

Value Proposition Canvas was developed by Alex Osterwalder and his team in 2012, as an extension of the Business Model Canvas. It isolates the two core elements from the business canvas — "customer" and "value proposition" — and uses a simple, intuitive approach to help us think deeply: Who is my customer? What is my product's core value? And what is the relationship between these two? We will be using the version refined by Peter J. Thomson.

In the Value Proposition discussion, we will collectively map out consumer insights, product value, competitive landscape, and ultimately arrive at a clear, communicable value positioning that can guide Marketing's subsequent strategy for marketing and communications.

This Workshop will be divided into two parts. The first part will be a presentation by Cui Jin, who will use real-world cases from Wandoujia, Lightstream, Qingmang, and the broader industry to explain how Marketing plays a role at each stage of the product lifecycle. The second part will be led by Meng Xianglin, who will guide participants through a "brand positioning (Value Proposition Canvas)" exercise using a real case.

• Cui Jin has spent her career in PR and Marketing. After graduating in 2000, she spent ten years in PR at Baidu, Ogilvy West, and Google China. She joined Sinovation Ventures in 2010, and later co-founded Wandoujia together with Junyu and Feng Feng, where her primary focus was brand building.
• Meng Xianglin studied advertising in college and interned at Ogilvy for a year doing PR. After graduation, she joined Sinovation Ventures, then moved on to Dianxin Mobile and Wandoujia. She spent nearly five years in Marketing at Wandoujia, focusing on PR and brand management. She is currently a partner at Lightstream Lab's Brand & Communications Camp, working on marketing solutions tailored for startups.

We hope this Workshop will help you gain a deeper understanding of Marketing and get an initial grasp of the Value Proposition Canvas methodology.

Next weekend, let's be Marketers together!

Event Details

▍Time: July 23, 2017, 13:00 - 18:00

▍Location: Lightstream Lab, Dongsi, Dongcheng District, Beijing (exact address will be sent after successful registration)

▍Capacity: 20 people

▍Fee: 199 RMB per person. Covers venue operating costs, refreshments, and Workshop materials.

Registration

▍How to register: Please scan the QR code below to enter the registration page. Registration deadline is July 18, 2017.

▍Registration follow-up: After submitting your registration, a Lightstream Lab team member will contact you by phone for a brief screening. Once confirmed, you will be contacted again to collect the event fee.

If you can't attend due to scheduling or capacity constraints, we will continue to share event proceedings and summaries in our WeChat discussion group. Everyone is welcome to scan the QR code below to add our admin and join the "Do It Today" discussion group.

Q&A

We hope the following Q&A helps you understand this event. If you have other questions, please leave us a message via the official account backend.

Q: What is the "Do It Today" series?

A: Lightstream Lab hosts one "Do It Today" event each month, sharing methodologies in product design, branding, talent management, and other directions. We named the series "Do It Today" because we want to put good experience and methods into practice through direct, offline events with like-minded friends. No more letting knowledge stay on paper or in our heads — we take action now; no more stuffing our to-do lists with grand ambitions — we act now.

Q: Who is this event suitable for?

A: If you want to work with a group of people to turn ideas into reality, this is an excellent hands-on opportunity. If you have entrepreneurial inspiration and passion but don't know how to sort out your ideas clearly, Do It Today is an ideal setting to learn systematic methodologies for finding the right direction, and to communicate your ideas with industry experts and get feedback. We very much look forward to gathering with bright minds from diverse backgrounds to explore, create, and share a bigger, better world — and to make products that make the world better.

Q: Who owns the intellectual property generated during the event?

A: There will be many discussion and interactive sessions during the event — this is a process where everyone learns from each other. If great ideas emerge, we hope everyone can use them. All ideas generated will be under CC0 license. This is a relatively permissive form of intellectual property protection, which roughly means anyone in the world can use them.

Q: I want to learn more about Marketing. Any recommended materials?

A: First, one book and one article related to this Workshop:

• Alexander Osterwalder's Value Proposition Design (Chinese title: 《价值主张设计》);
• Peter J. Thomson's article introducing his refined methodology, "Value Proposition Canvas Template."

And two general reads on Marketing:

• Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotler et al. This is a thick, textbook-style book — we strongly recommend skimming it as a reference or dictionary. If you don't have a marketing background, this book can quickly familiarize you with many terms and concepts (after which you'll discover that even today's rapidly evolving marketing world can't clearly distinguish many of these concepts anymore);
• Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout. "Positioning" has been a buzzword for years, and this concept is also an important root of Value Proposition. The specific positioning methods in this book may no longer apply to innovation-driven new enterprises, but many of its thinking methods — such as 3C analysis — continue to influence us today.

Follow the Lightstream Lab official account for previous product methodology shares and event summaries: Master These 4 Key Points to Make Design Workshop Truly Improve Design Efficiency, An AB Test of a Design Workshop Itself, Using "Questions" to Help Solve Problems, 22 User Stories About Video.

About the Organizers

Lightstream Lab

Lightstream Lab is a consulting agency that provides methodology services for startup teams. Through startup partnerships and consulting, it aims to bring the entrepreneurial experience and methodologies accumulated since Wandoujia to more founders. The lab hosts Design Workshops, consulting open days, online reading groups, and other events serving entrepreneurs.

Lightstream Lab · Brand & Communications Camp

Established in response to the significant branding and marketing demand from founders today, it differs from traditional marketing consulting agencies by providing integrated services covering brand strategy, marketing execution, and team training. Its goal is not only to help startups quickly implement branding and marketing work, but also to help entrepreneurial teams build capable internal marketing teams.

Zhiren

Zhiren (official account: zhirent) is committed to becoming a better professional growth community for internet practitioners, offering precise career opportunity recommendations, quality offline career talks, active peer online communities, and in-depth company coverage.

FreeS Fund

FreeS Fund (FREES FUND) was founded in 2015 by former IDG Capital partner Feng Li and Lin Zhonghua, among others. In two years, FreeS Fund has evolved from an early-stage fund management company to a full-chain fund management company, with assets under management of approximately 3.6 billion RMB. Its investment areas include finance, education, healthcare, entertainment, hardware, tech manufacturing, new energy, SaaS, information security, lifestyle, and more. Its portfolio includes Uber, Three Squirrels, Qingtao Energy, Shunshun Liuxue, IceKredit, Shenma Finance, and others. As of mid-2017, FreeS Fund's RMB main fund had invested in over ninety companies, more than half of which had completed subsequent funding rounds. In addition, FreeS Fund has established four specialized funds totaling over 1.1 billion RMB.