2013 was an amazing year at Leto and we’d love to share what we got up to.

Got a New Home

We started off 2013 with a bit hectic but extremely exciting undertaking – we moved from a co-working space to our own offices on Tabernacle Street, right opposite Google Campus. So now we have plenty of space for growth, crazy brainstorming, work, and play, of course. With all the first aid Xbox kit, we make sure that we know how to have a good rest during lunch or after a packed day of work.

Doubled Numbers

When we sat down and compared 2013 to the previous year, it turned out our client work has largely increased, our revenue has gone up, and most importantly, the projects we got to work on have massively grown in their complexity and quality.

We’re also proud that we’ve gained invaluable long-term relationships with a number of clients, who have been continuously working with us since our early days. It’s a pleasure being able to consult them when they come up with yet another great idea, and subsequently develop it, adding a new product to their basket of success stories.

Most of our new clients are referrals from the past ones, which we take as a sign of their satisfaction. This gives us a firm assurance in the quality we produce, and makes us more determined to keep innovating and excelling further in 2014.

Tested Internal Incubator Idea

As much as we love building digital products for our clients, we’re also passionate about experimenting and playing around with our own ideas. Therefore, we decided to establish our very own incubator to give our ideas a go. All the team members pitched their bright ideas to rest of Leto family, three top ideas were chosen and teams were formed. Everyone was given 20% of their work time (i.e. 1 day a week) to devote to their own projects.

However, incubator work had to be frozen soon, as we got too much clients’ work, which of course was a priority. Well, at least we tested the concept and found out that everyone loved it; most importantly we picked up on the hurdles that occurred and which we’re planning to resolve in the next month or so, in order to launch our internal Leto incubator properly at the beginning of 2014.

Released ‘Made by Leto’ Products

Throughout the year, we also launched three internal project management tool – Tracker, Timer and Estimator. Unlike incubator ideas that were of a personal interest, these are the products that emerged from our direct operational needs. All three are now used on a daily basis by all the members of the team and our clients, who wish to be involved in the process of their project development.

If you run a startup or an agency please feel free to check out Tracker & Estimator as they make project management and estimation much easier, more efficient, and client-friendly.

Grew the Team

Consistently growing and being constantly on a hunt for a very talented people, we got lucky with two great new assets to the team: Joe Watts (Digital Designer/ film geek/ ) and Paulo Goncalves (Mobile Developer/ tea lover / instagram fan). Ok, here’s a secret: we also JUST hired some interns starting early January; we’re super excited, but not revealing any names yet.

Ran a Pan-European Event

On the community front, we came up with what seemed a very innocent initiative, which eventually grew into a large pan-european movement called Startup Rally, consisting of 9 independent but cross-linked events. The idea was to break European tech community bubbles and develop a more solid eco-system. Startup Rally connected young entrepreneurs across Europe, let them exchange experiences and local market knowledge; while the pre-screened startups were also given an opportunity to pitch in the front of local investors.

Startups were travelling and pitching (if successful) in as many as 9 cities, if they wanted to, meaning they had 9x times more chance to secure funding. The initiative was loved by both startups and investors, as well as many more startup community leaders expressed an interest to bring Startup Rally to their local city. So seems like Startup Rally is to be continued on a larger scale in 2014.

Shared our skills & topped up qualifications

Being involved in the community is one of our key motivators and we have managed to attend or speak at all kinds of events last year, including Hacker News Meetup, Node School, Django Con (Django conference in Warsaw, Poland), Startup Advocacy Summit, Spain JS (summer JavaScript conference in Madrid, Spain), Great British Node Conference, LNUG (London Node User Group) meetups, Pioneers Festival (Vienna, Austria), 5th Global Webit Congress (Istanbul, Turkey), Design and Banter (event for London’s brightest startup designers), Silicon Christmas party, and many other networking events, conferences, summits, and pitching competitions.

Celebrated 2 years!

In October we celebrated our 2nd birthday. We decided that dinner and drinks wouldn’t be enough so we threw Go Karting into the mix as well.

One of our web developers (Bruno) even made it into the top 10 racers of the month, which made us very proud of our own Schumacher. Perhaps, Bruno should be the one driving our Startup Rally car this year?!

Finished 2013 off in a true Leto style

Our Christmas celebrations were equally as exciting as the year been! We kicked off with Secret Santa underneath our Christmas tree, then headed to Liverpool Street ice rink to show off learn to skate, moved on to Bounce for some ping pong action, followed by a dinner at a gastro-pub in Holborn and a trip to the Bavarian Beerhouse for a shandy or two, or ten…

The party was a success, as our heads told us the following morning. Well, it was Friday after all!

Now that we’re into 2014, our New Year’s resolution is to keep driving towards creating better and greater digital products for our clients and ourselves, as well as strengthening our relationship with all the existing clients.

We wish you all a great and prosperous 2014 from the entire Leto family!