Welcome to Sunday’s Idea Brunch, your interview series with great off-the-beaten-path investors. We are very excited to interview Jamil Tahir!
Jamil is the managing member of TurnMark® Capital LLC, a San Francisco Bay Area-based private investment firm he co-founded in 2008. Before TurnMark, Jamil managed the research team for Cannell Capital, a long/short hedge fund, covering neglected equities, high-yield bonds and PIPEs. Assets grew to $1B during his tenure. TurnMark invests in unique public micro and small cap companies across industries with a multi-year investment horizon. Within microcaps he favors entrepreneur led businesses with material insider ownership. Before investing in any company, he looks for what he calls the “TurnMark”: the point when its fundamentals have shifted meaningfully and the stock market is beginning to take notice. He has been on the Board of AudioEye, Inc. (NASDAQ: AEYE, $165 million market cap, ~25% held by insiders) for seven years and is the Lead Independent Director. In total, Jamil has more than 25 years of public stock and bond investing experience. He earned a dual degree from UC Berkeley: a BS in Business Administration and a BA in Economics.
Jamil, thanks for doing Sunday’s Idea Brunch! Can you please tell readers a little more about your background and why you decided to launch TurnMark Capital?
Edwin, thank you for inviting me on. It’s great to be here. In terms of background, I grew up in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where I focused on academics and team sports like soccer, but when I moved to the States I was perhaps a bit of an outsider and threw myself into more eclectic individual pursuits like skateboarding and powerlifting. I guess that mix of collaboration, curiosity and persistence led me into an entrepreneurial career as a generalist investor. My introduction to public markets came by way of a couple of summer internships at Cannell Capital while I was at Cal in the late ‘90s. After a stint in investment banking in New York, I returned to SF and was with Cannell for seven years…so from intern to research director.
I’ve always had a bit of an independent streak, so launching TurnMark with primarily my own capital was a natural next step for me, and the timing was right personally. Well timed…right into 2008. As a net long-biased fund, it was a bit of a baptism by fire, but early 2009 turned out to be the best buying opportunity of my career, and we were positioned to take full advantage of it.
Since then, TurnMark has focused on managing internal capital along with that of some friends and family, a stable base that has carried the fund through several full market cycles. Following a challenging period in 2022 and 2023, I assumed full responsibility for TurnMark in early 2024 and have been running it independently since. More recently, part of my focus has been on a concentrated, long-term position in AudioEye, where I serve on the Board. In 2025, I also carved out a dedicated allocation to microcap companies, those with market caps below $500M. These are essentially private companies that happen to trade publicly, and very few institutional investors are calling on them yet. On a personal note, my wife and I have three sons interested in finance who are in and out of college, and I’ve been thrilled that each of them has done a tour of duty of sorts with me at TurnMark over the last couple of years.
Could you please walk us through your overall process, from first discovering the company to deciding to buy?
My origination process is a blend of treasure hunting through screening, conferences and revisiting old names, which after 25 years is quite a list. I’m sorting through the T.J. Maxxes of the world, looking for unique, discounted merchandise of quality that’s hidden among the odd sizes and colors. That said, I am not looking to buy a broken mirror just because it is on sale. I’m hoping to find overlooked companies undergoing real change that can grow into larger ones, earning a higher valuation on higher earnings in the process. To keep track of these opportunities, I log them in what I call the “Repo” and continually revisit them. When these out of the way stocks revalue, the upside can be several hundred percent, so “buying on the way up” can be very effective.
While I recognize we’re buying stocks, much of my research is general business analysis, since that’s ultimately what lets you stay comfortable in small and microcaps that might trade down 20% because it’s Tuesday. These days, when I find a stock that looks interesting, I’ve moved to having Claude run a comprehensive report I created called a T-line, a nod to my old school days of using Value Line. It’s a rich look back covering SEC filings, management biographies and years of earnings calls, showing how the company got to its current situation. It covers several dozen items and calculations I used to run manually, plus work I might otherwise hand to an analyst or intern (or do myself). This compresses 1–2 hours of work into minutes and allows faster, higher-quality first looks. I like to think my edge is in using AI tools to get the right information quicker, not just more information.
From there, I try to interview management as soon as possible. With smaller companies, if I can’t reach some level of management, I tend to pass unless there are very clear goals, evidence of success and the market is already starting to pick up on it. Usually, though, I can find a way to connect, and not many investors are calling these companies, so they welcome the inbound calls. I like to hear directly why the managers chose to work there, how the company got here and what they’re trying to accomplish over the next couple of years. If I need to get on a plane to meet them, I will, since I think these meetings are a clear edge in this market cap range. It’s become clear that the competition in this space is often a computer program, or day traders primarily focused on daily price action and headlines who move on after an initial one day surge. There isn’t much thought to what the company could be worth in a year or two, so what an acquisition, a recent hire or a move by a private competitor does to the trajectory of a business often isn’t priced in. Since the companies I’m looking at are usually going through some sort of change, more of the same historical data isn’t what’s going to cause the stock to revalue. It’s about what they’re doing now that’s new. What’s the plan, how committed is management to it, what are the tougher aspects and what might they be able to do after that? As I get up to speed, I might buy half a position and then look to double it as I connect with the company and they execute. I try to keep the book to 15 or so names to focus my efforts.
What are some interesting ideas on your radar now?
I’ll share a few ideas in different industries that are at various stages and hopefully your readers will find at least one that resonates.