Nicholas Hsu

Nicholas “Nick” Hsu is an investment partner at Palm Drive Capital, a venture firm founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York. Palm Drive’s current website lists Nick Hsu on the investment team, and third-party profiles identify him as a Managing Partner. The firm says it partners early with founders, “from pre-seed to seed,” and often writes the first check.

Before Palm Drive, Hsu worked in business development at Palantir Technologies from 2008 to 2014, after beginning his career as an analyst in the Communications Consulting Worldwide unit of FleishmanHillard from 2006 to 2008. He then completed an MBA at INSEAD in 2015.

Hsu studied at Stanford University from 2002 to 2006, earning a BA, and Palm Drive’s own origin story says the firm’s managing partners met at Stanford. Palm Drive says Nick later joined the founding partnership after reconnecting with Seamon Chan and Hendrick Lee, bringing a strong network and operating experience to the investment team.

Palm Drive has grown from a New York-based early-stage firm into a software-focused investor with a global footprint. SEC IAPD records show Palm Drive Capital LLC is SEC-registered, effective February 21, 2019; third-party ADV summaries report approximately $376M in regulatory assets under management as of 2026.

• Palm Drive’s stated positioning is: “Conviction before consensus.” The firm says it partners early with founders building enduring companies, “from pre-seed to seed,” and is “often the first check.”
• The firm’s published team page says Palm Drive is a small partnership by design: the team challenges each other before investment decisions, then supports founders as a whole firm once it commits.
• Palm Drive’s LinkedIn description says the firm is built on the belief that “innovators are everywhere,” with an investment philosophy blending “west-coast insight with east-coast discipline.”
• In a 2019 interview, Palm Drive described a focus on early-stage enterprise software companies with “a combination of strong metrics and reasonable valuations.”
• Palm Drive has historically looked for traction and unit economics: Seamon Chan told VatorNews that the firm often invested around $1.5M, could go earlier with $250K-$500K checks, and generally liked companies with around $1M in revenue when that showed useful unit-economics evidence.
• Sector focus includes enterprise software, e-commerce, healthcare tech, insurance tech, blockchain, fintech, AI, SaaS, and digital commerce.
• Palm Drive invests mostly in the United States but has also invested internationally, including Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia. Hsu has publicly emphasized Latin American founders and Miami as a gateway to Latin America.