Yanolja founder and chairman Lee Su-jin began his profitable profession within the trip trade as a motel janitor.
The enjoy impressed him to release lodge reserving web site Yanolja, which is Korean for “Howdy, let’s play,” in 2007. Now additionally a well-liked trip app, the logo’s turn into a world phenomenon with over 57 million downloads, in step with its web page.
Its good fortune helped Lee construct his personal fortune, too. He now has a internet value of $1.2 billion, which comes from proudly owning just about a 3rd of Yanolja along with his spouse and two daughters, in step with Forbes. He made his debut within the e-newsletter’s Korea’s 50 Richest scores this spring.
However Yanolja was once born out of necessity, reasonably than a love of trip. Lee was once orphaned at a tender age, and stayed with members of the family for many of his early life, in step with Bloomberg. When Lee was once 23, he wiped clean rooms at a “love lodge” — a kind of motel recognized for providing non permanent lodging at an hourly fee — in trade for a gentle paycheck and a spot to stick.
“Day in and day trip, I felt wretched however held on,” Lee, now 45, advised Bloomberg in 2017. “It seems like a dream now.”
He stored his cash, invested in shares or even began a salad trade, in step with Bloomberg. When that corporate failed, he pivoted again to hospitality — and at an opportune second.
Given their affordability, love accommodations have been typecast as protected havens for intercourse staff within the early 2000s, and the ones stigmas have been dangerous for trade, Yanolja’s CEO Kim Jong-yoon advised CNBC Make It in 2019. When South Korea handed an anti-prostitution regulation in 2004, Lee fearful the resorts that gave him safety would pass below.
So he made up our minds to rebrand love accommodations. He created a lodge overview platform in 2005, which turned into Yanolja two years later. His objective was once to modernize the accommodations, and persuade younger {couples} and vacationers they have been protected, handy and cost-effective.
“If all of the resorts depended on love, they would starve to dying,” Lee advised Bloomberg.
Kim mentioned Lee’s janitorial process, the place he may practice visitors’ reviews in love accommodations, was once in truth a get advantages: It gave him a leg up in tailoring the platform to its customers.
“I believe such more or less enjoy could be very, very useful to know the character of the trade,” Kim mentioned.
In June 2019, Yanolja turn into South Korea’s 8th “unicorn” startup through reaching a valuation of greater than $1 billion right through a investment spherical.
Two years later, funding corporate SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund 2 purchased a minority stake in Yanolja for $1.7 billion at a $6.7 billion valuation, in step with Forbes.
The maintain SoftBank sparked well-liked hypothesis of a possible preliminary public providing for Yanolja. Alternatively, the corporate has but to head public, and Kim even mentioned in a July 2022 press unlock that Yanolja was once in no rush to announce an IPO with the hospitality trade nonetheless recuperating from the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The corporate has expanded way past trip reserving, having introduced Yanolja Cloud, its personal synthetic intelligence instrument for different hospitality and recreational platforms, in 2021. Now, 19 million blended customers employ Yanolja’s instrument platforms for reserving, trip and belongings control operations, in step with the corporate’s web page.
That stretch is one thing to be happy with, Kim advised Reuters in 2019, however the corporate additionally accomplished Lee’s objective of moving the tradition and belief of affection accommodations.
“In the past, many of us weren’t ready to visit resorts out of embarrassment,” Kim mentioned. “However we’ve got drawn in visitors even for trip. That is the greatest trade.”
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