David Yu

David Yu says he founded Games R Us, a specialty hobby retailer in New Zealand, at the age of 17. Starting with trading cards, comics, and toys, he opened a retail store in Auckland that brought players and collectors together, and he has kept the store ever since; Cecilia Robinson, chair of the judges for EY Entrepreneur Of The Year New Zealand, said he had been running businesses since the age of 16.⁠[1][2][3]

He also founded Retail Management Group Ltd., through which he invested in international retail chains; in licensing and retail he built relationships with brands such as Konami Games, Games Workshop, Middle Earth, and tokidoki. He received a Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2016 and serves as CEO and trustee of two charitable trusts.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

Yu met Dan Crothers through his store, and the two became friends over a shared interest in games. In 2017 they concluded that the next step for collecting lay in the digital realm and teamed up to build VeVe, combining Yu’s retail and gaming experience with Crothers’s background in web design and development. Yu said that living somewhere as remote as New Zealand, the two had experienced firsthand how geography and cost limit the collecting of physical items, and that blockchain made it possible for collectibles to be acquired instantly, globally, and with authentication.⁠[2][2][2][1][1]

At the time, the digital collectibles industry was just emerging, with no established market or clear demand, and he took on considerable risk. Yu recalled that the two pitched major rights holders in the United States before they had a product prototype, with “just some PowerPoint slides”; he believes one key to winning over the rights holders was that they were collectors themselves and could use their own experience as consumers to show there would be demand for digital collectibles. He also cited the toy industry to explain the shift to digital: children used to play with toys until 12 or 13, but now pick up tablets much earlier.⁠[5][2][2][2]

VeVe launched in 2020, and within six weeks it reached 60,000 users, the figure originally projected for the end of its first year. Yu said that soon after launch it had millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of accounts holding collectibles; he later described coping with the surge in demand and rapidly upgrading the infrastructure as one of the biggest challenges of building the business.⁠[2][2][2][1]

When Marvel and VeVe announced the first official Marvel NFTs (Spider-Man digital statues), Yu, as VeVe’s co-founder and CEO, said the partnership with Marvel had finally come to fruition and that he looked forward to offering fans new ways to collect superheroes and memorabilia in digital form.⁠[6][6]

Yu was a finalist for EY Entrepreneur Of The Year New Zealand 2023 with VeVe. His finalist profile said that at the time 35% of VeVe’s users were in the United States and 40% in the United Kingdom and Europe, that the company was turning its attention to untapped markets such as China and Japan, and that it was preparing to launch the metaverse product VeVeVerse.⁠[5][5][5]

At the awards ceremony on November 15, 2023, Yu prevailed over finalists including Jamie Beaton of Crimson Education, Carmen Vicelich of Data Insight, Angus Brown of Ārepa, and Chris Warren of NZS Group to be named the overall EY Entrepreneur Of The Year New Zealand, and he was to represent New Zealand at the World Entrepreneur Of The Year event in June 2024. Chair of judges Cecilia Robinson called him a “silent achiever,” humble and grounded, who had the courage to enter an entirely new industry and lead it.⁠[7][7][8][3][3]

Yu regards the 2024 launch of VeVe Comics at SXSW as a turning point for the company: VeVe had previously focused on digital collectibles, and the addition of licensed digital comics from publishers such as Marvel brought in many fans who had never engaged with NFTs.⁠[1][1][1]

Yu said in June 2025 that at VeVe he is responsible for global strategy, brand partnerships, and product innovation; that the StackR integration lets users buy and sell collectibles with the OMI token; and that the company was preparing VeVeVerse, a mobile-first metaverse app. His advice to entrepreneurs was to build something they genuinely love, listen closely to users, and stay adaptable and resilient.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

Yu is listed among the 2026 judges for EY Entrepreneur Of The Year New Zealand; his judge profile says he has more than 25 years of experience in the gaming and collectibles industry.⁠[9][9][10]

ECOMI Technology Pte. Ltd., the issuer of OMI, the token of the VeVe ecosystem, is a company registered in Singapore; its MiCA white paper lists David Shu-Han Yu as the company’s beneficial owner and sole director, and lists him on the project team as co-CEO and founder.⁠[11][11]

VeVe: Official website: https://www.veve.me/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

X: Public account: https://x.com/DavidYuNZ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]