Why this exists

I’m Sean, founder of Canvass Research. I left the corporate world a few years ago to invest full-time and build businesses. During this time I’ve gone deep on AI, building agents, automated systems and the multi-agent stack that now powers every Canvass report. I built Canvass out of necessity, for myself.

Right now, I’m deep in the process of planning my own ptosis revision surgery in South Korea. Third eyelid surgery, second revision, one failed.

When I first started researching Korean surgeons, I did exactly what most people do. I scoured Reddit threads, clinic websites, and Google results for weeks. Yet I still felt like I was guessing with incomplete information.

The real issue wasn’t a lack of effort. It was access.

The most valuable details live on gated Korean-language platforms and communities that simply don’t appear in English searches. Honest surgical outcomes, detailed complaint records, medical registry data, unfiltered discussions. None of it shows up in an English Google search.

On top of that, most agencies and intermediaries earn 20–30% commissions from the clinics they “recommend.” Their service is free because the clinic, not you, is the actual customer.

I refused to make a high-stakes decision with only a fraction of the picture. So I built the system I wished existed. A rigorous, independent research process that pulls from Korean platforms, medical registries, complaint records, and published medical research most English speakers can’t reach.

That system became Canvass Research.

I originally created it for my own surgery. Once I saw how powerful it was, I realized so many others are facing the exact same information gap and the same pressure from biased recommendations.

Canvass Research runs on a system I designed where a human researcher operates a stack of 20+ specialized AI agents, each tuned for a specific task: credential verification, review analysis, red flag detection, pricing patterns, complaint records, and more. The agents handle the breadth, running in parallel across English-language sources and international aggregators. The researcher pulls from Korean review platforms directly, which are gated against automation, then reads everything together, cross-references contradictions, decides what holds up, and writes the report. Every report then runs through a separate anti-hallucination audit before delivery.

That division of labor is the point. AI compresses the time. Human judgment compresses the noise. Every claim is evidence-cited so you can verify it yourself.

I built it for my own surgery. Then I realized how many people are making the same decision with almost none of this information available to them.

My wife is Korean. We visit Seoul every year and have family there. Korea isn’t a market opportunity for me. It’s personal. I know the healthcare system, the culture, and the gap between what’s available in Korean and what reaches English speakers. That’s what Canvass Research is built to bridge.

Canvass Research is independent by design. No clinic partnerships. No referral fees. No commissions. No investors pushing us to upsell. You pay us. We work for you. That’s it.

We don’t recommend surgeons or provide medical advice. We give you the research — credentials, surgical outcomes, red flags, pricing, complaint history — and you make the decision.

Our full operating principles are published in our Transparency Charter. We think you should be skeptical of anyone who won’t tell you exactly how they operate. So we put it in writing.