The Original IT-Millionaires of Finland: The Rytsölä Brothers Behind Saunalahti and Jippii
About 30 years ago, in the year 1995, the 20-something-year-old brothers Jaakko Rytsölä and Antti Rytsölä founded the Saunalahti and Jippii internet-company. Jippii Group Oy was listed to the Helsinki Stock Exchange only 5 years later, in 2000, making the Rytsölä brothers IT-millionaires.
Jaakko Rytsölä and Antti Rytsölä posing for Peter Jansson in the year 2000.
Their success, luxurious lifestyles, and the matching Lamborghini Diablos they bought for 900,000€ brought a lot of fame and media interviews in Finland - even the singer Frederik made a song about their shopping sprees called “Rytsölät Baanalla.”
Jaakko Rytsölä and Antti Rytsölä posing with their matching Lamborghini Diablos.
Image by Peter Jansson / YLE
However, as was the case with a lot of early internet companies when the dot-com bubble bursted between 2001 and 2002, the Jippii Group Oy’s value crashed down 90% in August 2001, and the brothers lost everything. Jaakko Rytsölä has said publicly that he lost over 8,5million euros over a single night and, at all time high, the value of his Jippii Group Oy stocks was around 15million euros.
Jaakko Rytsölä and his Yellow Lamborghini Diablo.
Image by Jarno Juuti
In March 2003, Jaakko was found financially broke and unable to pay his 1.3 million debt to the Finnish government and was sentenced to one year and six months probation for gross dishonesty of the debtor in the Helsinki district court.
At the end, the Rytsölä brothers forever changed both the car and entrepreneurship cultures of Finland.
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