LettsGroup is revolutionising the venture model with advanced technology. Today, technology leadership is a huge determiner of economic and global dominance. LettsGroup is at the forefront, investing in deep tech and pioneering innovative solutions that will shape the future of society and economies.
Led by Philip Letts, the 7th generation of the Letts family and Executive Chair of LettsGroup, the company is equipped with a long-standing family legacy of innovation, and is now combining it with cutting-edge technology to create a systematic approach to venture production. They have two guiding principles and methods to achieve impact in venture building.
First, the Innov@te™ methodology uses a customer-centric approach. It places the customer at the heart of the innovation process. Through tight-loop systems of curation that involve data collection and behavioural analysis, LettsGroup ensures that its ventures are built to meet the needs and behaviours of the target audience, resulting in a higher chance of successful adoption of their products in the global market.
Second, their Size Zero methodology addresses the traditional notion that getting "too big" kills innovation. Instead, it focuses on efficiency and control in scaling ventures, providing a solid foundational structure for sustainable operations. The unique combination of methodologies allows LettsGroup to achieve repeat innovation and sustainable venture building, setting a new standard in the industry.
"LettsGroup is committed to pushing the boundaries of the venture model by leveraging advanced technology and deep tech investments," said Philip Letts, Chair of LettsGroup.
"In today's dynamic global landscape, technology leadership is a key determinant of economic and societal success. We are dedicated to investing in innovative solutions that will shape the future and drive ventures to the top of the global power rankings."
LettsGroup has already made significant strides with its initial ventures. LettsArt, the first NFT-enabled, fully accessible, website platform designed purely for the art world, has quickly gained traction, providing a new way for artists, art dealers and collectors to engage with and better monetize online audiences. LettsSafari, a subscription-based digital climate venture, has also gained momentum in addressing the biodiversity crisis through rewilding initiatives that are defining subscription economy eco-services. Additionally, LettsGroup is developing LettsNews, a fully automated, AI powered news network, and LettsCore, a groundbreaking Media-as-a-Service platform that is creating the first content blockchain.
As LettsGroup marks the 3rd iteration of Letts family incubators in 2023, it continues to redefine the venture model with its innovative approach, looking to drive ventures to develop industry-first practices. The company remains committed to its corporate values of innovation, sustainability, quality, integrity, and family, and aims to make a lasting impact in the world of venture building.
LettsGroup unlocks repeat innovation methodologies out of a historical family
business model - the first of its kind.
LettsGroup, the family-run branded venture group, has become the first to crack the code to repeat innovation, following the release of the 3rd edition of the company's methodological framework, Innov@teTM. The tried-and-tested approach is a pivotal breakthrough in the world of innovation, thus allowing a model that codifies and ensures consistent venture production.
“Using our proven incubator methodology, and advanced technology, we solve some of
society’s most pressing problems,” Philip Letts, Chairman.
In 1796, John Letts built the world’s first corporate incubator. John Letts’s incubator developed a series of successful innovations including the first commercial diary, the Letts Diary. Further innovations included interest tables, specialist clerical and medical diaries, calendars, parliamentary registers, ledgers, and logbooks.
Now, in 2023, LettsGroup marks the 3rd iteration of Letts Family incubators, with its Executive Chair, Philip Letts, the 7th generation of the eponymous diary family. The world’s oldest corporate incubator has cashed out their invention of the diary, and cashed in on providing sustainable, repetitive innovation and venture building.
“It seems we are all becoming entrepreneurs. And yet no one has cracked repetitive
innovation,” Philip Letts, Chairman.
A series of corporate and innovative expertise has thus led to the establishment of LettsGroup. From LettsGroup’s tried and tested methodological approach, innovation can be a codified, patterned stream of service. Heavyweight international technology leaders have unified to support the growth of the branded venture group, including previous senior leaders of O2, Oracle UK and Ireland, EDS International, UBS, Broadview International, and Silverpeak. The team is littered with expertise in the cutting-edge world of innovation and tech.
LettsGroup is breaking through the market with a number of initial ventures, with the aim to establish a ‘Unicorn’ venture by 2030 - with the help of renowned tech investors. To highlight, these ventures include LettsArt, the first NFT-enabled, fully accessible, Web3 platform for the art world; and LettsSafari, the subscription based digital greentech platform that tackles the biodiversity crisis by expanding rewilding initiatives.
“Behind the scenes we are building a fully automated news network called LettsNews and
LettsCore, a groundbreaking Media-as-a-Service platform,” Philip Letts, Chairman
The methodology at the core of LettsGroup is Innov@teTM. Innov@teTM is the modern and extended approach of John Letts’ original incubator. Additionally, LettsGroup is in the business of repeated, technologically advanced, and sustainably conscious innovation. The methodological approach behind LettsGroup is the code to unfolding further new ideas to become projects, products, and ventures. Ford cracked the code for mass production. LettsGroup is cracking the code for innovation. More precisely, cracking a new innovation and venture every two and a half years.
But LettsGroup is not in the business of just throwing money and huge sums at problems or innovation. Its Size Zero methodology, accompanying Innov@teTM, presses Letts' theory that getting ‘too big’ kills innovation.
Both philosophies set out a necessary foundational structure to the successful operations of an ‘organisation’ for innovation, LettsGroup.
Where the family ventures, their simple philosophy follows, placing the customer at the heart of innovation. LettsGroup extends and optimises this philosophy, ensuring the customer is centre much earlier than in typical innovation processes, where many assume the centre to lie solely with entrepreneurs and inventors. This process is upheld further through tight-loop systems of curation, for which customer data collection and behavioural analysis is at the foundation.
Even more central to the corporate incubator is its seasoned founder, Philip Letts. The Chairman has over thirty years of experience in innovation, launching his first private incubator, Prophete, in 1997. From Prophete came Beenz - the earliest iteration of a crypto currency, boasting more than 6 million customers before its sale to Carlson Group companies.
Prophete was the first test of the Innov@teTM methodology. From Philip Letts’ second private incubator in 2006, The Visual Studio, came Maistro Ltd. Once again, the innovation was a breakthrough in the creative services marketplace, taken public in 2012. Furthermore, from The Visual Studio came Size Zero, a methodology handbook published in 2015 to guide young ventures to scale with
greater efficiency and control.
The company boasts the corporate values of innovation, sustainability, quality, integrity, and family. Led by the Letts family and managed by established industry leaders, LettsGroup is combining innovation with tackling the issues of society today, placing environmental consciousness at the forefront of these values. Its integrity is derived in its stance that no innovation supported by the incubator will be without deep considerations of sustainability, a pledge the Group has and will continue to uphold.
While just at its infancy, the branded incubator has produced its first, emerging ventures. Also a number of tech-centric ventures are being developed within the incubator, with LettsGroup producing a factory of new ideas, and a code to repetitive innovation.
Remote working, Web3 and AI could be changing the management game - LettsGroup is paving the way for venture capital innovation.
Management is changing, and LettsGroup is at the forefront. Remote working, Web3 and artificial intelligence (AI) will fundamentally alter the way organisations operate, meaning a call for change from organisers who are having to keep up with a world led by digital natives and cooperative work styles. Also for LettsGroup, these changes are marked by each ventures’ technological advances to establish platforms that are up-to-date, smoothly run and accessible.
The definition of management is in a state of change. Once defined as ‘the act of getting people together’, a generation makeover has dubbed a new definition to ‘gather people remotely’. Management is becoming first and foremost about organising and managing systems, with the people having to come second - likely requiring a new breed of managers to make it work.
Most standard definitions about management pontificate about organising people, resources and budgets to meet specific targets. Required skills include planning, strategy, budgeting and people management. This all made sense in the twentieth century. However, it could make increasingly less sense as the 21st century unfolds, as we switch from a people-centred view of management to a system-centric approach. Businesses that are successful are digital.
Tomorrow's organisation will likely be 100% remote, 100% digital, fully automated. Lean, innovative and fast. An approach LettsGroup intends to emulate across its venture portfolio.
The traditional manager is often considered a barrier to younger employees’ progress and growth. Where digital knowledge is lacking amongst an older management team, strategy and company growth wanes. Thus, management today needs experienced technology experts and a drive to adopt new technologies. LettsGroup CEO, Philip Letts, offers a host of experience within the tech venture world, running prosperous start-ups such as Beenz and Tradaq, which made waves in the world of digital - pioneering cryptocurrency and defi. Therefore, the team at LettsGroup contains many established, high-profile technology developers who are hungry to apply new digital innovations to their work.
As is reflected in LettsGroup’s company culture, the future style of management is shaped by the switch to remote working. Managing remote resources requires a fundamentally different approach as technology takes the lead and ‘organising’ experiences a reboot. Also, the latest systems for communication, planning, project and process tracking are rolling out. For LettsGroup, Zoom is just the first step.
If there was any doubt about the switch to remote, Findstack offers some sobering statistics:
Remote working operates most effectively when each team member assumes full responsibility for themselves and the team communicates effortlessly with each other. An almost self managing entity. The principles that we have adopted by working with customers remotely over the last few decades also need to be applied internally. For LettsGroup, transparency is everything. Transparency through systems. And tight, highly productive teams full of 'leaders on the pitch'.
If managing remote employees might be better suited to the newer, more flexible and digital generation, then just wait for the transition to Web3 and AI. The former is challenging the very heart of organisational structure while the latter will automate practically any task worth doing.
Today, LettsGroup is indulging in the future. By adopting a 100% remote working policy, developing Web3 innovations and embracing digital steps forward in NFT-enablements, the venture builder has only scratched the surface of its ambitions for advancements.
This article was first published in the Letts Journal.
LettsGroup is a branded incubator group, which is active through @LettsGroup on twitter.
If innovation is the new global currency, how do we do it right?
In 1995 Bill Gates famously announced the ‘internet tidal wave’ and officially threw Microsoft’s future at the web. Steve Jobs went one step further, after he returned to Apple, adding ‘i’ (for internet) in front of its product names. A decade later the iPhone was launched. The ‘i’ may as well have stood for ‘innovation’, because that is what they were searching for.
Leaders are betting on innovation to stay ahead of 21st Century threats. Biden has re-framed the relationship with China as a battle between two arch competitors - and may the most innovative win. Johnson sold Brexit as a tool to unlock the power of British ideas, in particular ‘Peppa Pig’. And everyone is praying for new technology to save us from the climate crisis - while emissions just keep climbing.
Like cancer, it seems that there is no cure for poor innovation, a disease which destroys the majority of companies. It is becoming a business epidemic while product variants are increasing and product life cycles are becoming shorter and shorter.
Corporations thought they had found a solution when they latched onto corporate incubators over a decade ago. A number of management consultants and academics touted it as the answer to hatching unicorn scale ideas in a factory. Today, corporate incubators are largely bust.
Larger companies are desperately seeking new approaches. John Lewis, the UK department store owner, is launching a £1m innovation fund that will channel cash into projects with the potential to end the high street’s “throwaway” culture. The fund is aimed at identifying “innovators” that are challenging the industry’s outdated “make… use… throw away” model.
In order to power their transformational strategy, and generate new ideas for tobacco-free products, PMI harnessed the power of crowdsourcing - engaging more than 65,000 employees worldwide. This gave employees from multiple departments and backgrounds a means to contribute suggestions, as well as assessing and developing them.
Businesses have also tried to develop ‘future thinking’ techniques and techno hackathons. They have attempted to outsource innovation and partnered with innovation consultancies like IDEO and Hubbub. They have even tried collaborating with venture investors and entrepreneurs.
And yet none of this seems to be working too well. Big companies used to have a lifespan of 61 years, it is now down to 18.
McKinsey believes that, in 2027, three quarters of the companies that were quoted until recently on the S&P 500 will have disappeared. They will be bought-out, merged, or bankrupt. General Electric, Exxon Mobile, Procter & Gamble and DuPont are among the oldest companies on the New York Stock Exchange. Nevertheless, those with the largest market capitalizations today have new names: Apple, Alphabet, Meta or Amazon.
General Electric recently announced that it will break up into three separate businesses. DuPont has merged with Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobile is struggling with investigations and lawsuits.
In 1973, the English economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher asked why large companies keep disappearing at such a rate when he published his influential book ‘Small is Beautiful’. He exposed the inefficiency of large enterprises and anticipated the current trend towards sustainable development. He maintained, “What characterises modern industry is its enormous consumption to produce so little… It is inefficient to a degree that goes beyond imagination!”
The loss of energy is called entropy. It’s what kills large companies.
Large companies need a continuous input of more and more management energy simply to continue to exist. The larger the company, the more energy it needs - just to survive. Apparently large companies spend more time managing themselves than they do serving their customers.
As the life expectancy of companies drops, that of its workers is increasing. That’s changing the makeup of business - as their employees demand more labour market flexibility and greater mobility. In the US, almost a third of all employees have an independent or contingent activity and are not linked to a company by a full-time working contract.
It seems we are all becoming entrepreneurs. And yet no one has cracked repetitive innovation.
Or have they?
One of the world’s oldest corporate incubators is attempting it. And they believe the secret lies with their customers.
John Letts invented a world’s first corporate incubator in 1796. He started out with a simple philosophy, that the customer was the secret to innovation. He just had to figure out how to get them to invent things with Letts. Later, he developed the infrastructure to take these products to market and scale them.
He built an incubator studio that nurtured and developed new business ideas and inventions coupled with a vibrant store in the heart of the city of London where they could mingle with customers. These interactions led to prototypes and prototypes were tested back with the customers. Successful prototypes quickly became live, paid-for concepts. Concepts became products.
The studio was attached to the store. Today the store is virtual.
In the early 1800’s John Letts’s incubator developed a series of successful innovations including the first commercial diary. He launched interest tables, specialist clerical and medical diaries, calendars, parliamentary registers, ledgers, and logbooks.
The latest generation of the eponymous diary family is betting the new shop on cracking sustainable, repetitive innovation. They have developed a methodology called Innov@te™ which modernises and extends the initial incubator approach developed by John Letts. It tackles the process for innovation, like Ford cracked the process for mass producing cars.
Innov@te™ comes to life in virtual incubator studios that bring together inventions, their inventors, designers and customers in live, iterative, customer concept phases.
Combined, it offers a modern factory for ideas that are engineered into new projects.
LettsGroup also created the Size Zero philosophy, which sets out the necessary structure for turning projects into businesses. They call it the ‘organisation’ for innovation. It supports and enhances the theory that getting too big can kill innovation.
According to them, the secret to innovation lies with customers, from the outset, adopting tight-loop systems that curate innovation out of a series of physical and virtual interactions. All while conventional thinking assumed that the answer lay with entrepreneurs and inventors. The power of ‘one’.
LettsGroup has challenged itself to develop a brand new venture every two and a half years. Time will tell whether their approach will get us any closer to cracking one of the 21st century’s greatest dilemmas. After all, we will need all the innovation we can muster to face society’s newest set of challenges.
This article was first published in the Letts Journal.
LettsGroup is a branded incubator group, which is active through @LettsGroup on twitter.
LettsArt is a British startup and the first secure, NFT enabled artist website platform.
LettsGroup’s latest technology startup with a seasoned team led by Philip Letts, a well known British internet entrepreneur, has launched an online platform for visual artists, including traditional and digital artists, photographers, filmmakers and designers, to flourish by selling their art directly to their supporters. Visit it now at www.lettsart.com.
The platform is the first of its kind, enabling artists to set up their own simple, yet powerful online galleries in minutes. LettsArt will allow users to sell both physical and NFT enabled digital art, taking payment by bank card, credit card and cryptocurrency. Artists will enjoy innovative authenticity, royalty management, and series management tools through the site.
Registration is set to be free, creating greater access to talented artists who struggle to break into the exclusive art world - with only a 10% commission taken for art sold through the system. Equally, art collectors will benefit from direct artist sales and a more transparent and open market for exciting new art from around the world.
"We believe that the art market is going through some fundamental changes. By enabling artists to easily launch their own online gallery and offer their art directly to their supporters, LettsArt could turn the art market on its head - providing opportunities for creators and collectors alike."
Philip Letts, founder Letts Group & LettsArt
LettsArt provides a secure environment for NFT art transactions. Both the creators and the collectors register with the site and provide profile information, tackling issues NFT's have had with fraud.
The platform has the potential to attract a significant number of creators and provide a transparent and efficient art marketplace for collectors worldwide, in a market that has no stock exchange style clearing house and little direct support for artists and artist sales.
LettsArt's Web3 artist gallery model is timely as creators look to better monetise their followers and supporters on social media, including on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
LettsArt is available to UK artists and galleries in limited beta. Artists can sign up at www.lettsart.com. Keep up to date with its progress through @LettsArt on twitter. Find out more about the branded incubator group, LettsGroup, and its ventures through @LettsGroup on twitter.
LettsArt is a LettsGroup company. For press inquiries and requests contact: [email protected]
