About Us
About
Arrowside Capital
Change moves along a continuum. Those who deny it fall behind, and those who harness it move ahead. That’s what it means to be on the arrow side of change.
At Arrowside Capital, we help forward-looking investors capture the upside of progress. We identify and invest in durable, compounding businesses built to lead in today’s “winner-take-most” economy—and keep winning tomorrow.
Founded in 2022 by seasoned growth investor Tucker Walsh, Arrowside blends institutional rigor with entrepreneurial agility. We believe great companies don’t just adapt to change—they drive it. That’s why we seek out market leaders with strong fundamentals, scalable models, and momentum to power through market cycles. Arrowside isn’t for everyone. But if you believe markets are evolving and legacy strategies aren’t keeping up, we might be the partner you’ve been looking for.
“Why am I being forced to sell my best ideas ?”
That’s the simple (but painful) question Tucker Walsh asked himself after 30 years in the investment world. And it changed everything for him.
His journey started in the early ‘90s as a Wall Street intern. The first few weeks were underwhelming—sales, trading, syndicate. But once he landed with the research team, everything clicked. He couldn’t believe people got paid to dig into companies and make educated guesses about the future. He was hooked. That led to roles at Cowen and Merrill Lynch, writing research on PC hardware and software—back when Microsoft was worth just $8 billion. He loved connecting dots, spotting underestimated opportunities, and imagining what might happen next.
In 1999, he became a portfolio manager just as the dot-com bubble was forming. Always entrepreneurial (his mom says he never did things the conventional way), Tucker co-founded Copper Rock Capital in 2005, growing it from seed capital to more than $3 billion in AUM. Most recently, he launched and led the SMID growth team at Polen Capital, growing that strategy to just under $1 billion.
Founder Timeline
Early 1990´s Cowen & Co /
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Sell-Side Technology Analyst: PC Industry
Mid 1990´s Cowen & Co / Chilton Investment
Buy-Side Technology Analyst
1997 - 2005 State Street Research
Lead manager Small-to-Mid Cap Growth
Grew AUM to $4B
2005 - 2015 Founded Copper Rock
Capital
Capital
Small and Mid-Cap Focus
80 Portfolio Holdings
Started Concentrated Strategy
Grew AUM to $3B
2017 - 2022 Founded Polen Capital Small Co Growth Team
Small and Mid-Cap Focus
30 Portfolio Holdings
Concentrated High Quality
Grew AUM to $1B
2022 -
Current Founded Arrowside
Capital
Current Founded Arrowside
Capital
Small and Mid-Cap Innovation Strategy
25-30 Portfolio Holdings
But something shifted.
The IPO market dried up. Public small caps became harder to find. And the market itself had changed; technology and network effects were concentrating economic power into a handful of dominant companies.
Still, rigid style boxes forced him to sell great businesses because they didn’t “fit.”
That question—why am I being forced to sell my best ideas?—became a line in the sand.
Arrowside Capital was born from that realization. It’s a firm built on Tucker’s decades of success in SMID investing—but without the old constraints.
We focus on owning the best 25 companies we can find, early in their lifecycle, and holding them long enough to realize their true potential.
The Team
Founder & CIO
Tucker Walsh
Tucker is the Founder and CIO at Arrowside Capital LLC. Previously, Tucker was the Head of the Small Company Growth team and lead portfolio manager of the Polen Small Company Growth fund (ticker: PBSIX) from November 2017 to January 2022. Prior to that, he was the Founder and Head of Portfolio Management at Copper Rock Capital Partners. Before founding Copper Rock, Tucker was the lead portfolio manager of the Small Cap Growth strategy at State Street Research. He began his career in research at Merrill Lynch and Cowen and Company. Tucker earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Washington and Lee University.
Analyst and Junior Portfolio Manager
John Barrett, CFA
John is an analyst and portfolio manager at Arrowside Capital LLC. Before joining Arrowside, he was the Founder and Co-CIO of CrestFin Capital Partners, a private fund focused on small and mid-cap public equities from March 2022 to December 2024. Prior to CrestFin, John served as a portfolio manager at Shorepoint Capital Partners, overseeing equity investments across multiple sectors. Before that, he spent over 15 years at Columbia Threadneedle Investments, where he co-managed a small-cap strategy and worked as a research analyst covering the consumer discretionary sector. Earlier in his career, John was an equity analyst at Gannett Welsh & Kotler Investment Management (GW&K) and spent five years at Fidelity Investments as a sector specialist. He began his career as an economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. John is a CFA charterholder.
COO
Michael Sakala
Michael has over 30 years of experience in the investment industry. He began his career in 1988 with Fidelity Investments. He has led the middle and back offices of several firms, including running the New York office for BISYS Fund Services, serving as the head of the middle office at State Street Research and Management, and being a founding Partner and CFO/CCO of Copper Rock Capital Partners. In addition, Mike was a senior manager at EY, where he led numerous projects assessing the operating models, compliance programs, governance structures, and overall infrastructure of top-tier private equity and investment firms. Mike holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Master of Science in Finance from Bentley University.
