Welcome to the first issue of Capitolino.

This publication will be about money: markets, macro, and the forces behind them. But before you borrow someone's eyes to look at the economy, you deserve to know whose eyes they are.

I am not a bank analyst. I have never worked at a hedge fund. What I have done, for the past decade, is build businesses. Mostly failing, occasionally surviving. Today I run a company that sells a rather unusual product in 42 countries. Everything I write here about the economy comes from that vantage point: someone who has had to meet payroll, clear customs, defend patents, and read demand with his own money on the line.

So for this first issue, instead of telling you what I think about markets, let me show you where my thinking comes from. This is the story.

Two years ago, I launched what I sometimes call an electronic Viagra.

Since then, we have sold more than 9,000 units across 42 countries, and the technology behind the product is now protected by granted patents in South Korea, the United States, China, Japan, and Europe.

The product is called KAISAR.

I still haven't reached the destination I set out for. Not even close.

But getting this far has been far more difficult, uncertain, and lonely than I ever imagined. And honestly, it still is.

I am not one of those stereotypical startup founders who always seems to know exactly what he is doing. Sometimes I feel more like a little boy who had never held a sword in his life, somehow thrown into a battlefield full of medieval knights, and miraculously survived for two years.

Still, the road I've walked means a great deal to me. It feels almost like a child of my own: something small and shining, buried somewhere inside a pile of tears, mistakes, fear, and persistence.

So I wanted to leave the story here.

Before KAISAR

My startup journey actually began much earlier.

In 2015, while I was pursuing a Ph.D. in materials engineering, I was selected for a startup program in Korea and entered the world of entrepreneurship for the first time.

There were achievements from those years that I'm still proud of. Our company received investment from one of Korea's major technology companies. I published research in an international academic journal ranked roughly within the top 4% of its field.

From the outside, things probably looked promising. But that was as far as I could take it.

I was inexperienced. I was immature. I simply didn't know enough about building a company.

Eventually, I walked away from the company I had created. Something that had felt like my own child.

Things didn't get better afterward. They got worse.

By around 2022, both my business and personal circumstances had reached one of the lowest points of my life.

I've always been someone who loves sleeping in. But during that period, I would wake up almost every morning at 6 a.m. with cold sweat running down my back. Fear is surprisingly effective at turning you into a morning person.

I tried almost anything I could think of to survive. I imported products from India and tried selling them in Korea. I tried making inexpensive products such as chocolate. I launched one small business idea after another.

And they failed. Again and again.

Then, one evening, I remembered something.

The first company I had founded years earlier was based on a relatively simple idea: using specific wavelengths of light for skin-related applications.

At the time, red light therapy was nowhere near as mainstream as it is today. There were scientific papers, but the concept was still unfamiliar to most consumers.

That business never reached its full commercial potential, largely because of my own lack of experience. But I had learned two things that stayed with me.

First: there were real biological mechanisms behind certain wavelengths of light.

Second: not everyone responded in the same way, but enough people noticed a difference that I became convinced light-based products could be commercialized.

And that led me to a very simple question. If light therapy has biological mechanisms and can be turned into a real product, why couldn't we apply the same principle somewhere else?

The moment that thought entered my head, I started searching academic papers. And I found something interesting.

There were scattered studies suggesting that specific wavelengths of light could influence things like sperm motility and cellular activity.

The research was fragmented. There was no obvious consumer product built around it. But there was enough evidence to make me curious. Very curious.

Could light be used for male health?

I discussed the idea with my cousin, who is a professor at a university hospital. Then I began sketching what a real product might look like.

My thinking was simple: if there is a real biological mechanism here, there may be a business here too.

There was another problem, however. If the concept worked, it would be relatively easy to copy. So from the beginning, intellectual property became a central part of the strategy.

We began developing the product while simultaneously preparing patents. At the same time, we started working with researchers at a university hospital. That research continued for roughly four years.

Through those studies, we observed several biologically meaningful responses associated with specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared light, including:

These findings became the scientific foundation behind KAISAR.

The research also changed the way I thought about product development. I stopped asking what product I could sell. I started asking whether there was a biological mechanism worth investigating, and only then whether we could engineer a practical product around it.

Meanwhile, we continued filing patents. It took roughly three years, but eventually our patents were granted across South Korea, the United States, China, Japan, and Europe.

Then we began selling.

9,000 units. 42 countries.

Over the past two years, KAISAR has sold more than 9,000 units in 42 countries. And we're still building.

One of the most interesting things I've learned along the way is that men's concerns are surprisingly universal.

Before selling internationally, I assumed there would be significant differences between countries and cultures. Perhaps that was partly because I'm Asian myself. I assumed American men, European men, Middle Eastern men, and Asian men would think very differently about this category.

Apparently, not that differently.

And there is one thing that happens almost every time I attend an international exhibition. Regardless of country, race, or age, someone picks up KAISAR, looks at it, and tells me he doesn't need this. Then he points at the guy standing next to him and says his friend definitely does.

Every country. Every exhibition. Same joke.

Men, apparently, are also universal.

Then our customers taught us something we hadn't expected.

After selling KAISAR for some time, I noticed something strange in our customer data. A surprisingly large number of buyers were in their 70s.

That immediately caught my attention. Why were men in their 70s buying this product? So I started looking into it. And we found something unexpected.

Some older customers were telling us that they had noticed changes not only in sexual-health-related areas, but also in urinary symptoms: things such as waking up repeatedly at night to urinate, frequent urination, feelings of incomplete emptying, or discomfort during urination.

Of course, customer anecdotes are not clinical evidence. Some of these experiences could be subjective. But there were enough similar reports that I wanted to understand what might be happening.

So I asked one of the urology professors who advises our company. His hypothesis was that potential mechanisms might involve factors such as reduced inflammation around the urethral region and improved local blood flow.

At this point, this requires much more research. And that's exactly what we intend to do.

Sometimes your customers discover the next research question before you do.

The part that matters most to me

Every once in a while, an older customer calls us personally. Some tell me they experienced meaningful changes in their daily lives. And occasionally, someone simply says thank you for developing this.

Those moments stay with me.

Because KAISAR didn't begin with some grand vision of changing the world. It began when I was struggling. I was trying to survive. I was desperately searching for something, anything, that might work after watching one business idea after another fail.

And somehow, something I started while fighting to save myself ended up becoming useful to someone else. There is something deeply meaningful about that.

I have no idea where the KAISAR story ultimately ends. We are still small. There are still countless problems to solve. There are still nights filled with uncertainty.

But recently, I've found myself thinking repeatedly about something someone once told me. The only way to make money is to make sure your partner, whoever that partner may be, can make money too.

Customers. Distributors. Researchers. Employees. Investors. Partners.

Maybe building a sustainable business is ultimately about creating enough value that the people walking alongside you are better off because you exist.

I'm still learning. Still struggling. Still building.

But for now, I'm grateful that the little grain of sand I found while drowning has managed to shine at all.

Why this story opens Capitolino

I told you this story because it explains how I will write about the economy.

When I build a product, I no longer ask what will sell. I ask whether there is a real mechanism, and only then whether it can become something practical. I write about markets the same way. Not which narrative is trending, but what is the mechanism, what is the evidence, and what does it actually change. You will see that structure in every issue: a claim, the evidence, the mechanism, and what it means for you.

And I bring two things a chart cannot give you. First, ground truth. I read the economy through purchase orders, customs delays, distributor margins, and 70-year-old customers who call the office. The economy as it is lived, not just charted. Second, a vantage point most American commentary lacks. I sell into 42 countries from the other side of the Pacific, where the supply chains everyone theorizes about are simply daily work.

Capitolino takes its name from the Capitoline Hill in Rome, where the temple of Juno Moneta housed the Roman mint, the birthplace of the word money. Money has always been a story about power. I will tell it straight, as someone who operates inside it.

The story of money. Every story of capital leads here.