Last time I posted on LinkedIn, I announced my departure from Affinity after 19 years.

Here is what comes next.

I spent 25 years in this business — 23 of them in Korea: 4 years at Goldman Sachs, then 19 years at Affinity as Senior Partner, Head of Korea, and Head of the Operations Group — where I built and led the value creation and AI transformation strategies across the portfolio. Twenty-four investments (including bolt-ons) across nearly every major sector, over 80% of which I led as Deal Partner and/or Chairman of the Board.

And one thing became clear with every deal: the returns came from making companies fundamentally better — transforming their core capabilities to make the business itself stronger. Do that right, and earnings grow. Multiples follow. Not because you rode the right cycle. Not because of financial engineering. Because the company is genuinely better.

My team and I defined the End Picture first — a clear view of what each company needed to become — and then found management teams who could see the same destination and own it as their own. From there, the focus was singular.

And the work was in the field. Visiting retail outlets every weekend. Driving around the country, walking into stores unannounced, meeting customers, checking in with frontline teams. Planning at the whiteboard — drawing out the roadmap together, working through problems side by side with management. Walking alongside them through execution, not just showing up at entry and exit.

The management piece never stopped. Some of the best leaders we recruited took years — persistent courtship, selling not the position or the compensation but the dream of what the company could become. The conviction that this role, this moment, this transformational journey was worth more than any title. That tenacity in finding and winning the right people is as much a part of the value creation playbook as anything that happens after the close.

When we saw windows open — market shifts, technology inflections, moments where AI, digital, or fundamental business transformation could change how a company competed — we moved. Pivoting strategy when conditions demanded it. Launching new businesses and entering new markets at speed. Acquiring and integrating bolt-ons to build category leadership and create synergies — 12 bolt-on acquisitions, all led directly.

During my time at Affinity, Burger King Japan, built from zero stores to the #1 burger brand in the country. Oriental Brewery, from a distant second to market leader. JobKorea — one of the earliest and a very rare successful AI transformation (AX) play in Asia PE — rebuilt into Worxphere, Korea's #1 AI-powered HR platform. ServeOne, transformed through product, market, and category expansion: visiting client factories in Wroclaw to build an EV battery center of excellence where none existed, traveling to Nashville, Troy, and Savannah to understand what Korean B2B clients needed to serve their US customers, attending CES and MWC with the ServeOne and JobKorea management team — missing kids' birthdays to do it — so our strategy reflected where AI and technology were actually going.

That kind of value creation. That is the only playbook I know.

AI Transformation is genuinely hard for any institution to carry out — unless you have a strong vision, the right leadership, and a proven playbook to drive it. I have spent 25 years developing exactly that.

That is where Artemis begins.

The name is not random. For most of human history, the moon was the dream — always visible, never reachable. What changed wasn't the ambition. The technology caught up. Through technology, that dream is now reachable — if you have the right people, the right technology, and the right knowledge to use it. Korea's mid-market is in that same moment now. What's been missing is a firm built, without compromise, to deliver this transformation.

Artemis Partners is that firm — 25 years in the making. Value Creation at its core, Transformation-first — with AI and digital transformation at the operating core of how we create value, not an overlay on an existing model. Transparent from day one: clear incentives, formula-based carry, a genuine partner track for everyone who joins. But the goal isn't just partnership economics — it is building a firm of people who think and act with the same conviction and passion for value creation and transformation. Partners who share the dream, the passion, and the drive for achievement.

Korea's PE industry is going through a generational shift. Succession and carve-outs are creating a deal environment unlike anything we've seen. AI transformation isn't just a tailwind — the gap between companies that act and those that wait has never been wider.

That's what the last 25 years were preparation for. And now there's nothing standing in the way.

More on the firm, the thesis, and what I think this moment actually requires — coming soon.