In Massachusetts, where Asians were a minority, Yu often faced ignorant comments from teachers and peers about his heritage. At the same time, his parents also pushed him to excel academically and athletically. Yu played tennis at the Division 1 collegiate level, the highest level of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) competition.

But his move to Cupertino, California, during his teenage years would bring a new kind of pressure.

There, surrounded by high-achieving Asian peers, Yu struggled with feelings of inadequacy. What had once been his edge—“working harder than my classmates”—was now the norm. This hyper-competitive environment, coupled with his frustration over a lack of clear identity, led him to rebel. “I lost a lot of sense of my own identity and struggled quite a bit in high school. I ended up being kind of a weird cat. I had a Goth look and started wearing a trench coat, and I was shoplifting constantly,” he recalls.

The most pivotal moment of Yu’s journey came through an act of misdemeanour—shoplifting the book, Honor and Duty, by American author Gus Lee. The semi-fictional novel depicts a Chinese American’s experience at West Point in the 1960s. Having grown up in a liberal area of Massachusetts, Yu had never heard of West Point before. The book’s description of the military academy as a place that could break someone down and rebuild them resonated with Yu’s desire to forge his own identity; the academy represented an opportunity for transformation.

His decision to enrol into West Point before turning 18 required a special parental waiver and was not met with enthusiasm by his family. Joining the army went against Chinese cultural norms as military service was often viewed as equivalent to “willingly going to prison”. 

Yu shares, “There is a Chinese proverb that translates to, ‘You wouldn’t use a good piece of iron to make a nail, so why would you take a good man and waste him on being a soldier’.”

Yet his motivation for this atypical decision was singular. “I wanted to do something so hard that people could not ever talk shit to me ever again.”

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The transition to the military school was brutal. “I was such a bad pleb,” recalls Yu. “I barely made it through, to be honest. There’s a lot of intense physical education classes and physical education accounts for 15 per cent of your GPA.”

In his first year, he ranked last in military performance and had to endure constant hazing from his seniors, which almost broke him psychologically. He even goes so far as to say that those years were more traumatising than the years he served in the Special Forces.

One time, a mandatory boxing class resulted in a traumatic brain injury that sent the then 17-year-old to the hospital. Instead of quitting, Yu exemplified the warrior spirit he sought to embody. He spent a summer training with a boxing coach, returned to compete in boxing intramurals and won the Brigade Open Boxing Championship in his senior year.

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Yu’s journey as a soldier did not end with his graduation from West Point in 2001. Months after graduating, the September 11 attacks happened. “My class of 2001 became known as the class of 9/11. In the entire history of West Point since 1802, there hasn’t been a class like ours that was in combat for 20 years straight. I took [the attacks] very personally,” he says.

After West Point, Yu enrolled in Ranger School, a crucible that further pushed his physical and mental limits. He recalls enduring extreme deprivation—little food, minimal sleep and harsh conditions designed to simulate an actual combat situation. But he also realised a well of resilience in him he didn’t know existed.

Surviving Ranger School was not just a rite of passage, it was the confidence boost he needed to pursue the Green Berets.

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As a Green Beret, Yu ascended to one of the highest levels of the US Army Special Forces. He was assigned to a unique regional counter-terrorist unit based in Okinawa, Japan, leveraging his skills and experiences to take on high-stakes missions. He went on four combat tours to Iraq and the Philippines and became one of the most deployed captains in his year group.

In retrospect, Yu views his military life as a defining chapter of his identity. While he candidly admits to hating every day at West Point, likening it to a “minimum-security prison with a strong vocational programme”, he now recognises it as sacred ground—a place that transformed boys into men far beyond their years.

After leaving the military, Yu explored various life and career paths, including going to Johns Hopkins University for graduate school, moving to Hong Kong to join Credit Suisse and working at Palantir in the US. However, his life took a dramatic turn when he was let go from the software company.

A devastated Yu suddenly found himself in unfamiliar territory—unemployed, without a clear purpose and struggling to navigate civilian life. “I was couch surfing, running out of money and unsure of what to do next.”

That’s when his mother rang and told him about the kidnapping of a family friend, Evelyn Chang or Chang An-wei, asking if there was anything he could help with. This was 2013. His mother convinced him to fly back to Taiwan to see if he could tap into his military experience and contacts to initiate a rescue. Upon landing in Taiwan, he realised this was a high-stakes international incident.

Chang, a Taiwanese civilian had been abducted by gunmen while on holiday with her husband at a resort in the state of Sabah in Malaysia. She was taken to the Southern Philippine island province of Sulu, adjacent to Malaysia, and held for ransom. Her husband was shot and killed during the abduction.

“At first, I didn’t think about doing anything. But when I heard the victim’s family tell the story, I thought it sounded like [the work of] [the terrorist group] Abu Sayyaf. I did two combat tours in the Philippines, so I was well acquainted with the Abu Sayyaf and the Philippine government military groups.” As he learned more about the case, he also realised that no help was being offered.

For Yu, it was an incredibly serendipitous moment. “For the first time in my life, I was available to orient all of my capabilities to help them with this problem.” He also describes needing this for himself, “for a sense of redemption”.

The mission seemed almost impossible: infiltrate one of the world’s most dangerous regions and bring Chang back safely. But the call to action ultimately marked the beginning of what would become the story of two rescues—one of Chang, and the other, a rediscovery of Yu himself.

His book, The Second Shot: A Green Beret’s Last Mission, released in October 2024, details how he drew on his extensive military experience and network of contacts to gather intelligence and coordinate a daring but successful rescue operation.

“One of the most fascinating things is that people who live in the equivalent of below the poverty line stepped forward to put their lives and careers on the line in a rogue, unsanctioned mission to get Chang out,” he shares. “It is now considered one of the most successful operations against the Abu Sayyaf.”

The aftermath of Chang’s rescue thrust Yu into an unexpected spotlight when Taiwanese media revealed his identity as the previously unknown nephew of the republic’s sitting president. The combination of his West Point education, Special Forces background and his familial connection to Taiwan’s highest office created a perfect storm of public interest.

Yu humorously describes this period as his “15 minutes of boyband fame”, where people would run out of cafes to try and take photos with him.

The sudden notoriety also proved to be a powerful business catalyst. He notes, “I could get a meeting with just about anybody at that time.”

During this time, Yu met Matt Pecot, who would be his co-founder at Blackpanda in addition to the company’s chairman and first seed investor. A fellow former Special Forces officer, Pecot had led the same counter-terrorism unit 17 years before Yu. Both men shared the rare distinction of early promotion to the rank of major, forging a mutual respect and connection that became the foundation of their partnership.

Recognising Yu’s potential and extensive network, Pecot proposed launching Blackpanda as a physical security consultancy, with Yu as the face and CEO—marking the start of his entrepreneurial journey.

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Yu shares that he carried his appetite for risk into the startup world, although the transition from military leadership to corporate management required significant adjustments on his part.

“Starting a business has a lot of parallels to the military—leading a team, making tough decisions and dealing with uncertainty. But it’s also different in that there’s no rigid structure. You have to create that structure for yourself and your team,” he says. “One thing I carried over from the military is the idea of mission focus. Whether in combat or running a business, you need to have a clear goal and a plan to achieve it.”

He also had to unlearn certain military approaches, especially in terms of communication. The direct and candid communication style that served him well in the army needed refinement, especially within the Asian business culture, where an indirect approach is often preferred. He also learned the hard way that unlike in the military, where soldiers couldn’t simply quit, corporate employees could—and would—walk away if they were pushed too hard.

Today, after five pivots, Blackpanda has found its niche. “What we’re doing is a business model disruption. We’ve made incident response 10 to 20 times less expensive than our competitors,” says Yu.

It has offices in Singapore, Manila, Hong Kong, Tokyo and San Francisco, and is backed by major investors, including Gaw Capital Partners and SingTel Innov8. 

The company’s success validates Yu’s unique approach to security, which combines ancient security principles with modern digital needs. As he puts it, “The physical safety and security models have been worked out by our ancestors for thousands of years. Just because they weren’t technical doesn’t mean they weren’t smart; they worked out models of how to protect ourselves and those need to be replicated inside the digital space.” 

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Blackpanda has been around for nine years, or what Yu describes as a “nine-year combat tour”, and now his priorities have shifted. With the recent hiring of key executives, Yu wants to return to sales and marketing—areas he considers his strengths.

More importantly, he has discovered that building a trusting relationship with his employees has become his primary source of motivation, superseding even the company’s achieved success. “What I care about most right now is relatedness. I care a lot more now about having meaningful relationships in the company and being happy about the people that I’m around,” he says.

Growing its presence globally, the company is preparing to expand into Australia, furthering its mission to bridge the innovation gap between Eastern and Western markets in cybersecurity solutions.

We ask Yu a series of quickfire questions to learn what makes him tick. 

The biggest misconception about the Green Berets?

Gene Yu (GY): That we can do everything. We get put on a pedestal a little bit too much. Often people think we’re [like] Olympic athletes. The movies do glamorise quite a bit of it, but at the end of the day, we’re normal people, just with probably a bit more motivation in certain areas.

What’s the coolest thing about working in cybersecurity?

GY: Being in crisis response helps provide quite a bit of meaning and utility because we save companies’ lives every single day. It creates a sense of purpose to see how important our work is for our victims. 

The best advice you’ve received?

GY: The best advice I ever received was from a friend who said, ‘Marry a woman that you feel comfortable will raise your children the way that you want if you die.’

Most uninsurable industry?

GY: Sorry to all the crypto bros out there, but crypto is a super high risk for cyber insurance. The other industries that generally can’t be touched are pornography and gambling.

Why do you do what you do?

GY: I like to solve complex problems, particularly ones that I feel I have a unique set of skills, knowledge and abilities to handle. I believe a lot of happiness is derived from a sense of service. The truth is, I can get a sense of the utility of going out and doing charitable work, but the fact is that a lot of people can do that.

So, the sense of well-being that I have from being a security expert and now my entire career being across both public, personal and private sector domains, I’ve come to realise that is actually what I was put on Earth to do. I derive a tremendous sense of purpose and clarity around the work I do each day because it’s something I’ve developed a unique set of skills for.

This article is part of Founder Stories, a series dedicated to discovering the untold stories and challenges of today’s entrepreneurs on their climb to the top.

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