This former U.S. special forces officer raised $22 million for his startup
Gene Yu is the co-founder and CEO of Blackpanda.
Courtesy of Gene Yu
The 46-year-old startup’s founder, Gene Yu, seems to have lived more than one life at once.
Before starting his own company, he was a Division I tennis player, graduated from the United States Military Academy, commonly known as West Point, with a degree in computer science, served as a “Green Beret” in the U.S. Army Special Forces, led the rescue of a family friend from a hostage situation, and wrote a book.
Today, he is also the co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity startup Blackpanda, which has raised more than $21 million to date, according to an official company report. announcement.
While he has undergone extremely rigorous military training, served on battlefields and led major counterterrorism missions, he said his toughest challenge has been domestically.
Growing up Asian American
Yu was born in Concord, Massachusetts, where he says he was the only Asian child in his town. He then moved to Cupertino, California when he was 10 years old.
His family history is unique and in some ways high-profile: his uncle is Ma Ying-jeou, who served as Taiwan’s president from 2008 to 2016.
Growing up as an Asian man in America, the artist says that he often internalized the messages society told him: “you are inferior, you are unattractive, you are not desired, you are not equal.” This negatively affected Yu’s self-confidence.
These feelings of inferiority grew stronger at home from time to time. He learned at an early age to prioritize success. “In Asian culture, we learn that performance equals love, right? Even better, lack of performance equals absence of love,” Yu said. CNBC Did it.
Yu says his early experiences led him to pursue success as a way to preserve a younger version of himself. “It’s like you’re a wounded kid and you’re wearing the Iron Man suit,” he said. “You armor yourself as a traumatized person.”
“I hated my own identity because it was scarred, right? I wanted to create a new identity, and that’s what the military does for you,” he said.
So, after graduating from high school, he left home at the age of 17 and went straight to West Point, known as an extremely prestigious and elite military academy. He later joined the U.S. Army Special Forces, where he served as an officer and commander.
From his high school years until his time at West Point, he worked approximately 16 to 20 hours a day. This intensity shaped the work ethic he still maintains today.
“At West Point, you get up around 5 a.m. and then you come down. [midnight] … It’s six days of school a week, no summer vacation,” he said. “So I definitely know how to work hard, that’s for sure, I think so [helped] On Blackpanda.”
From special forces to startup CEO
Yu’s military career came to a turning point in 2009 when his uncle Ma Ying-jeou was elected president of Taiwan.
“It was there [an] “The investigation into the fact that my uncle is the sitting president of Taiwan, which occurred while I was in the Special Forces,” Yu said. This period raised difficult questions about his future.
Eventually Yu decided to leave the army, leaving him feeling confused and exiled.
“I experienced a huge loss of identity,” he said. “I was overcome with deep survivor’s guilt, because I knew that I was in my prime as one of the best Special Forces captains the U.S. Army has ever had, and that our children were overseas, dying and fighting, and I was just resting.”
In the following years, he struggled to find a new sense of identity. He spent several years studying Chinese and returned to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University; where he was hired to work as a stock trader at Credit Suisse.
Eventually, in 2012, he joined Palantir Technologies, which he grew to love, but was laid off in 2013. “After Palantir let me go… that was by far the hardest time in my life. I was also broke… very financially stressed and couch surfing,” he said.
Then a crisis involving a family friend named Evelyn Chang spurred him into action again.
Chang was taken hostage abroad by the terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf in 2013. Yu helped plan the rescue: He assembled a team, traveled to the Philippines and rescued her 35 days later.
This mission in particular is what inspired the idea for Yu’s company today, Blackpanda.
He realized that companies or organizations facing cyber attacks needed fast, 24/7 support provided by crisis insurance and services in cases of hijacking and ransom.
“So the same models [used in] The world of physical safety and security needs to be replicated in the digital world. That’s what’s missing in cybersecurity,” he said. He teamed up with some former Green Berets and went on to build Blackpanda, an idea all shaped by Yu’s unique background.
Today, Yu says attaching identity to achievements is a “trick game.”
“Because every time you strive for the next success, you think… Everything is going to be great, right? But the problem is, if you never heal the original trauma wound, then anyone can still hurt you from a different angle,” he said.
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