Liuliu Brain's B2E2C Model: Prioritizing Expert Collaboration to Establish a Clinical-Grade Product Positioning

Just before meeting with reporters, the two co-founders of LiuLiuNao, Xiang Huadong and Wang Xiaoyi, had just finished a meeting with an investor. After a long day of travel, they were rushing back to their company headquarters in Nanjing. That very morning, Xiang Huadong had only just disembarked from the high-speed train traveling from Nanjing to Beijing. “This is what entrepreneurs do,” said Xiang Huadong. “No one cares how hard you work; what matters most is delivering a successful project.”

What has captured Xiang Huadong’s attention is the “Liu Liu Nao” Scientific Brain Health Cloud Platform, developed by Nanjing Zhijingling Education Technology Co., Ltd. As the company’s founder, Xiang Huadong always speaks at length and with great enthusiasm when introducing his product.

Collaborate with authoritative institutions and industry experts to establish a clinical-grade product positioning

Currently, LiuLiuNao is entering the market from a medical perspective, offering a new generation of digital brain-health cloud services based on neural mechanisms. Xiang Huadong told VCBeat that, from a market standpoint, brain health is a widespread need, as everyone desires a healthy and efficient brain. If a product could assess your brain function and genuinely help you become smarter, most people would be interested and willing to pay for it.

Xiang Huadong explained that research and clinical practice have extensively confirmed the brain’s strong plasticity, with impaired brain functions being partially restorable. The Liuliu Brain system helps users enhance cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and logical thinking. “However, the general public’s primary concern is whether this system is truly effective, validated, and scientifically grounded. Therefore, we must first establish a professional brand positioning to build consumer trust.” For such an emerging product in the market, Xiang Huadong’s strategy for building its brand is B2E (Experts) 2C: collaborating with authoritative institutions and industry experts to establish brand credibility before gradually extending it to mainstream consumers.

Guided by this philosophy, LiuLiuNao initially focused on clinical brain rehabilitation, entering top-tier hospitals and collaborating with professional associations to validate the cognitive-enhancing efficacy of its products. By first establishing its positioning as a clinical-grade solution, the company subsequently expanded into the consumer market, extending its services to include neurological assessments for middle-aged and elderly populations.

Since the completion of its first round of financing, LiuLiuBrain has been successfully implemented in more than 40 hospitals, with over 500,000 user sessions recorded by September this year.

Furthermore, 66 Brain places significant emphasis on professional branding and the establishment of industry benchmarks. It has collaborated with professional associations and top-tier hospitals to conduct training on next-generation digital brain health technologies within the industry, becoming a national-level platform for the professional training and assessment of "Cognitive Trainers" in continuing medical education. The founding partners have applied for and presided over National Natural Science Foundation projects related to digital brain health, and have joined forces with multiple leading hospitals to carry out frontier research projects in brain rehabilitation, continuously endorsing the product's authority. Additionally, they initiated and established a brain science application platform and annual industry conference involving tripartite participation from the government, market, and scientific research institutions. Moreover, "I Love Brain Science," the world’s largest Chinese-language professional website for brain science founded by East China, has become an essential entry-level resource for students and physicians learning advanced brain imaging techniques. By establishing industry standards, maintaining technological leadership, and spearheading industry development, 66 Brain’s industry position and professional barriers in the field of next-generation digital brain health will become increasingly difficult for latecomers to challenge.

Four Target Populations: Stepwise Development of Tailored Products

In the plan of 66 Brain, the target audience for the product is divided into four categories: brain patients requiring rehabilitation therapy; high-risk groups for brain diseases who need preventive brain healthcare; children and adolescents requiring cognitive development; and professionals such as pilots, athletes, and special forces personnel who seek to enhance occupational performance.

“Our product is like a professional coach training you every day, except that it trains your memory, flexibility, and other cognitive functions,” said Xiang Huadong. He stated that LiuLiuNao has designed a serious game (functional game) for middle-aged and elderly individuals, which can exercise the brain through scientific training, delay brain aging, and prevent common age-related neurological disorders such as dementia.

During use, older adults first complete a self-assessment of their cognitive function on the website. Upon completion, the system automatically generates a comprehensive and authoritative report that highlights areas of cognitive strength as well as those with impairments. Subsequently, the system devises a scientifically tailored training regimen for the user, presented in an engaging, game-like format. Users simply need to log into the system via computers, tablets, or other devices to undergo assessments and engage in daily 15-minute brain-training exercises.

Six-Six Brain Science Principles

The game features modules such as "Bustling Traffic," "Dream Sky," "Colorful Balloons," and "Hide-and-Seek Chess." Upon completion of each game, the system displays a notification showing the user’s scores for flexibility and memory. Xiang Huadong stated that after accumulating 15 hours of training, improvements in specific cognitive abilities are guaranteed. Furthermore, tests conducted by Zhi Jingling (Smart Elf) have revealed that the more training sessions completed, the greater the improvement in scientific brain-health course performance and basic cognitive abilities.

Demonstration projects have already been launched in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou, primarily targeting hospitals and elderly care institutions for promotion.

In recent years, brain health has gradually become a popular trend. In developed countries and regions such as Europe and the United States, brain health has emerged as a major hotspot following physical fitness. Moreover, it has been included in key development plans by governments worldwide, with substantial research funding invested.

Data show that by the end of 2013, China had 213 million people aged 60 and above. The aging population is becoming an increasingly prominent issue, with age-related brain diseases being a significant concern.

Brain disorders are common and highly prevalent in China. However, compared with developed countries in Europe and the United States, China’s development in brain science and public awareness of the importance of brain health remain significantly inadequate. Xiang Huadong stated, “There were previously companies in China offering online brain-health services, but they were mere imitations of U.S. models, with questionable efficacy and poor alignment with Chinese users’ cognitive patterns and consumption habits, leading to their rapid failure. LiuLiuNao has not only independently developed its platform through what is arguably the strongest professional team in China, but also, after approximately two years of exploration, identified a development and market strategy that leverages the team’s core professional strengths while catering to domestic audiences. As a result, it is currently gaining rapid traction in the market.”

It is reported that the brand building and benchmarking initiatives of “66 Brain” have achieved the anticipated market impact. “Many hospitals and elderly care institutions have proactively reached out to collaborate or make purchases,” said Xiang Huadong. In the next phase, “66 Brain” will shift from a passive sales model driven by user-initiated procurement to an active sales strategy, promoting scientific brain-health training programs to more hospitals and communities. “66 Brain” will continue to optimize its existing brain-health products and develop additional scientific and engaging brain-training applications. The aim is to help more patients accelerate their neurological rehabilitation, assist older adults in better managing their brain health, enhance cognitive function, and enjoy a higher quality of life in their later years.

Currently, LiuLiuNao has signed agreements with multiple elderly care and children’s institutions in Nanjing to jointly promote scientific brain health. It provides free brain health assessments and cognitive status evaluations for middle-aged and older adults aged 50 and above, as well as for children aged 3 to 8. The Pudong New Area Civil Affairs Bureau in Shanghai has also procured 1,000 LiuLiuNao brain-health accounts, with plans to expand the number to tens of thousands.

Xiang Huadong holds a master’s and doctoral degree in cognitive neuroscience obtained overseas. With ten years of experience in internet product development, he founded Taoke.com, Wangzhai (a web clipping service), and a blog dedicated to popularizing brain and psychology science. Driven by an inherent passion for entrepreneurship and the sense of freedom and control it brings, Xiang established an advertising creative studio during his university years. In 2006, he launched I Love Brain Science, which has since grown into the largest Chinese-language professional portal for brain science, boasting nearly 40,000 professional members.

Liu Liu Brain was founded by several overseas-educated Ph.D. holders in brain science, including Wang Xiaoyi, who holds a master’s degree from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Ph.D. from the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University, and completed postdoctoral research at Xuanwu Hospital; and Zhu Zude, who earned his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of Kentucky and serves as a Distinguished Professor in Jiangsu Province. The members of its Scientific Committee hail from top-tier universities such as Harvard, Stanford, and Cambridge.

He explained to Huadong that LiuLiuBrain’s pricing for general users would be very affordable, offering free brain assessment and training applications, with the paid version priced no higher than the $6–7 per month charged by foreign companies.

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