Meaningful work,
in meaningful company

Hello everyone, this is Hyunjun Ji of VACATIO.

The world changes so fast, doesn’t it? Things move so quickly that we end up chasing whatever path is right in front of us, rather than the dreams we once had or the work we actually wanted to do.

In a world where not knowing about LLMs — which did not even exist a few years ago — makes you look foolish, learning fast-moving technology matters. But what matters most, I believe, is holding on to a philosophy.

VACATIO began as a hospitality software company. Today we build IoT and robotics, and we are opening a hotel in Samseong-dong. A little unusual, isn’t it?

Honestly, neither I nor our team expected the company to change this way. The one thing that did not change was our philosophy: “True innovation for the consumer comes from innovating for the supplier.” When Henry Ford built the automobile, when Steve Jobs built the iPad — in the end, the consumer’s world was transformed on the back of supplier innovation. Airbnb, too, I saw as a case of solving hospitality supply by innovating for the supplier.

Following that philosophy, we started with software and ended up handling IoT, and eventually robotics too. And because we needed a laboratory of our own, we built the VACATIO hotel in Samseong-dong.

Our financials are sound as well. Unusually for a startup, we have stayed operationally profitable for two consecutive years, and we are heading toward ₩10B in revenue this year. In 2024, a team of six raised a ₩6B Series A. We also placed third in the AI Champion competition (a ministerial award), appeared on Netflix, won a Red Dot Design Award, exhibited at CES, and were named to Forbes Asia 30 Under 30.

And now we are looking for teammates.

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The role matters, of course. But before the role, we are people — so we are looking for teammates who can run in step with us. People first, role second. I have worked a long time myself, and listing out specialties often makes me self-conscious; the things I thought were my edge turned out, many times, to be an edge only in one particular environment. That is why we look for people we can be with for the long run.

We are hiring broadly — from backend engineers and designers to Impact Junior, a role that exists only at VACATIO.

Honestly, this is not a team that is only comfortable. If anything we are a team in a turbulent stretch — the direction changes often and there is a lot of work. We do not take that for granted. So we try hard to reward contribution as it comes, and to find the direction as best we can. Even then, we do not always know the answer. One of the most valuable things I learned from founding a company is this: even when the situation is chaotic, it is teammates who can endure those stretches on trust in each other who carry you through to a result worth having. That is the team we are now, and the team I want us to keep being.

I have gone on long enough. VACATIO is hiring! Please join the VACATIO expedition. Like Shackleton’s voyage to the Antarctic, may our journey be hard and full of romance!

September 5, 2026 — Hyunjun Ji, VACATIO

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