One of the world’s richest self-made men started as a janitor—now his net worth is $1.2 billion

Yanolja laminitis and president Lee Su-jin started his lucrative vocation successful the question manufacture arsenic a motel janitor.

The acquisition inspired him to motorboat edifice booking tract Yanolja, which is Korean for "Hey, let's play," successful 2007. Now besides a fashionable question app, the brand's go a planetary improvement with implicit 57 cardinal downloads, according to its website.

Its occurrence helped Lee physique his ain fortune, too. He present has a nett worthy of $1.2 billion, which comes from owning astir a 3rd of Yanolja with his woman and 2 daughters, according to Forbes. He made his debut successful the publication's Korea's 50 Richest rankings this spring.

But Yanolja was calved retired of necessity, alternatively than a emotion of travel. Lee was orphaned astatine a young age, and stayed with household members for astir of his childhood, according to Bloomberg. When Lee was 23, helium cleaned rooms astatine a "love hotel" — a benignant of motel known for offering short-term accommodations astatine an hourly complaint — successful speech for a dependable paycheck and a spot to stay.

"Day successful and time out, I felt wretched but hung on," Lee, present 45, told Bloomberg successful 2017. "It feels similar a imagination now."

He saved his money, invested successful stocks and adjacent started a crockery business, according to Bloomberg. When that institution failed, helium pivoted backmost to hospitality — and astatine an opportune moment.

Given their affordability, emotion hotels were typecast arsenic harmless havens for enactment workers successful the aboriginal 2000s, and those stigmas were atrocious for business, Yanolja's CEO Kim Jong-yoon told CNBC Make It successful 2019. When South Korea passed an anti-prostitution instrumentality successful 2004, Lee disquieted the motels that gave him information would spell under.

So helium decided to rebrand emotion hotels. He created a edifice reappraisal level successful 2005, which became Yanolja 2 years later. His extremity was to modernize the hotels, and person young couples and travelers they were safe, convenient and cost-effective.

"If each the motels relied connected love, they'd starve to death," Lee told Bloomberg.

Kim said Lee's janitorial job, wherever helium could observe guests' experiences successful emotion hotels, was really a benefit: It gave him a limb up successful tailoring the level to its consumers.  

"I deliberation specified benignant of acquisition is very, precise adjuvant to recognize the quality of the industry," Kim said.

In June 2019, Yanolja go South Korea's eighth "unicorn" startup by achieving a valuation of much than $1 cardinal during a backing round.

Two years later, concern institution SoftBank Vision Fund 2 bought a number involvement successful Yanolja for $1.7 cardinal astatine a $6.7 cardinal valuation, according to Forbes.

The woody with SoftBank sparked wide speculation of a imaginable archetypal nationalist offering for Yanolja. However, the institution has yet to spell public, and Kim adjacent said successful a July 2022 property release that Yanolja was successful nary unreserved to denote an IPO with the hospitality manufacture inactive recovering from the tallness of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The institution has expanded good beyond question booking, having launched Yanolja Cloud, its ain artificial quality bundle for different hospitality and leisure platforms, successful 2021. Now, 19 cardinal combined users marque usage of Yanolja's bundle platforms for booking, question and spot absorption operations, according to the company's website.

That scope is thing to beryllium arrogant of, Kim told Reuters successful 2019, but the institution besides achieved Lee's extremity of shifting the civilization and cognition of emotion hotels.

"Previously, galore radical were not capable to spell to motels retired of embarrassment," Kim said. "But we've drawn successful guests adjacent for travel. That's the biggest change."

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