APRIL 2017 BCBUSINESS 47 BCBUSINESS.CA
L I F E S T O RY: Annee Ngo was born in a
refugee camp in Hong Kong and grew up in
East Vancouver. After studying political sci-
ence at
UBC and marketing at the University
of Toronto, she returned to Vancouver in the
summer of 2012 and co-founded retail sports
supplement brand GH Nutrition Inc.
In 2014, Ngo attended ProtoHack in
Seattle and met founder Blake McCammon.
Participants in the daylong event formulate
teams, choose an idea and design a busi-
ness concept. Each team pitches its project
to a panel of investors that awards seed
funding to the winners.
Ngo loved it. McCammon asked her to
join ProtoHack, and she hosted a sold-out
event in Vancouver with 75 participants in
August 2014. Ngo, who became VP in Janu-
ary 2016, made the non-profit a successful
business by introducing white-label events,
run by ProtoHack on behalf of organiza-
tions such as Adobe Systems Inc., Natural
Resources Canada and Stanford University.
She also works as global event manager for
digital newspaper distributor PressReader.
T H E B O T T O M L I N E : Last year Ngo
grew revenue by more than 300 per cent
and helped ProtoHack to expand from eight
to 23 cities, including São Paulo; Dubai; and
Chandigarh, India. —M.G.
A N N E E N G O
Co-founder
PROTOHACK
A G E : 2 7
camosun.ca
