Tamar Capital: Put the help on paper.

The pitch deck needed work. So did the brand. Then came a question about business strategy. For Karine Sarkissian, a founding partner of Tamar Capital, these requests were part of investing: a founder had a problem, and she helped solve it. But answering each request separately created its own problem. Useful advice kept arriving as a one-off. An investor's willingness to help was running into an investor's calendar.

That small operational snag is a useful way into a business otherwise described in the language of family offices and diversified assets. Tamar's interesting question is practical: how do you make an investor's experience available more than one conversation at a time?

Three siblings. Several kinds of capital.

Karine, Hrag, and Shahan Sarkissian founded Tamar Capital in 2016. The family office brought a new investment structure to a family with operating-business experience. Hrag had worked in Bemco, the family's construction business, on large infrastructure projects in the Middle East. Karine came from environmental design. Their starting points included both the mechanics of building things and the experience of the people using them.

Today, Tamar describes its work as asset, cash, and risk management, alongside financial planning. Its offices connect San Francisco, London, and Beirut. Its investment interests stretch across sectors and asset classes, with impact investing an expanding focus. The capital serves a family investment enterprise; founders encounter it as a potential backer. Those are different relationships, and understanding the distinction helps explain the business.

Consider the range. Tamar Real Estate sources, acquires, and manages UK property, including London's Synergy House and residential holdings. Tioopo Capital, another firm linked from Tamar's website, acquires profitable small and midsized businesses in France and Britain. Shahan co-founded Tioopo in 2021. A property, an established company, and an early-stage startup require different kinds of patience, expertise, and scrutiny.

One example puts flesh on the impact vocabulary. Karine has identified Therma as a Tamar investment. The cooling technology company, now called GlacierGrid, began with temperature monitoring to help protect refrigerated inventory. Its own account describes a subsequent discovery: cooling equipment's energy use presented a larger problem to solve. It expanded into energy management and adopted the GlacierGrid name in 2024.

There is a useful distinction here. Tamar supplies investment and support; the portfolio company builds the operating product. A restaurant seeking help with refrigeration would approach GlacierGrid. An entrepreneur building a company around such a problem might approach an investor like Tamar.

The calendar problem became a curriculum

In her CANOPY interview, Karine described the original founder support as ad hoc and inefficient. She invited Sophie Durey, an impact specialist and friend, to join the team. They co-founded Le Studio in 2020, putting a structure around work that had previously depended on individual requests. The change was prompted by the friction of delivering help, rather than a shortage of subjects to teach.

The resulting approach connected three disciplines: design, impact, and financial advice. Design covered questions such as problem framing, branding, and product development. Impact meant examining social and environmental performance. Finance meant helping founders think about raising money. The combination asks a young company to consider what it makes, what changes because it exists, and how it pays for its next stage.

The transferable lesson is simple. When the same requests recur, write down the method, build exercises around it, and reserve personal attention for the parts that resist standardization. That is an interpretation of Tamar's experience, not a promise that a workbook can replace a judgment call.

A paperback and a five-figure program

Le Studio now appears within Tamar Ventures, the venture firm Karine and Sophie created after working together at Tamar Capital. The relationship matters: the family office is the broader investment business, while Tamar Ventures presents its own investment and educational offerings. Its public website describes a portfolio spanning more than 60 startups. That is Tamar Ventures' stated scope, not a disclosed tally of Tamar Capital's entire holdings.

The current educational menu makes the business unusually tangible. Le Workbook is listed at $39.99 in paperback. Le Studio Online starts at $12,500, with white-label licensing for organizations such as universities and accelerators. Custom workshops are priced on enquiry. These are different routes into the material, for readers and institutions with different budgets.

Tamar Ventures says its platform has worked with more than 700 founders. It offers a podcast, a newsletter, workshops, and course material. The audience therefore extends beyond companies receiving investment: educators and corporate innovation teams can buy access to the teaching. Investment activity and educational sales coexist, with separate decisions about who receives money and who purchases instruction.

Kindness still needs a filter

The venture proposition has boundaries. Tamar Ventures targets pre-seed, seed, and Series A companies in the US and Europe, organizing its interests around human wellbeing and environmental problems. It invests deal by deal with aligned investors. Its criteria include a complementary team, a clearly understood customer problem, measurable impact, and early evidence of demand.

“Mental health comes first”

Karine Sarkissian, describing her approach to leading the team, July 2025

Karine's account of team life adds some texture to the selection criteria. She describes empathy alongside the need to push back, draw boundaries with founders, and tolerate disagreement among colleagues. The culture she advocates makes room for balance. It also requires people to say when something is wrong. Both matter in a business built around close working relationships.

For a founder, the practical next step depends on the problem. Someone seeking capital can study the venture criteria and submit a company. An educator can explore a licensed curriculum. A founder wrestling with strategy can start with the workbook. Instruction cannot manufacture demand, and the venture strategy will fit poorly when stage, geography, or impact goals diverge. Tamar's useful contribution is making some of the work around investing concrete enough to inspect, practice, and question.