Socialwok wins TC50 Demopit, brings much needed sunshine to S’pore start-ups

I just caught this over at Techcrunch – Socialwok wins one of the two highly coveted slots on the second day of Techcrunch 50’s demopit, where a grand total of 100 start-ups duke it out each year to catch the attention of the judges.  I’ve been tracking Socialwok since they first started, and have been impressed by the tenacity of the co-founders – Ming, Vikram and Navin.  Earlier this year, I had also interviewed Ming for the first of my “Opensourcing Failure” series, where he had shared with us his lessons on scalability and distribution.  Even though they didn’t capture any of the eventual awards (of which top prize had gone to RedBeacon), seeing their Demopit win brightened up my day, and brought some much-needed sunshine and inspiration to the rest of Singapore’s tech start-ups.

MG Sigler of Techcrunch says:

Simply put, if Google doesn’t buy these guys, they should seriously consider emulating many of the things they are doing or at least heavily promoting what they’re doing. (If there isn’t enough Google tie-ins for you already, all of Socialwok runs on Google App Engine.)

Although that would certainly seem to be the most obvious exit strategy, my gut sense tells me that Ming’s ambitions for Socialwok probably goes beyond just a quick exit.  A lot has unfolded since Ming shared his initial idea with me, and we’ve probably yet to see the best from him and his team.  In the meanwhile, I will be rooting out for Socialwok to attract the attention of quality angel investors who can give them that prop up into the big league.

Good luck, buddy.

Related posts:

1. Post-TC50 chat with Ming Yong of Socialwok
2. Thoughts on Socialwok
3. OSF 1: Lessons on Scalability and Distribution
4. 1st SG-Google Tech User Group Meeting
5. Of Lee Kai-Fu’s new US$115m Investment Fund and NRF’s TIS

Tagged as: DemoPit, Google, MG Sigler, Ming Yong, Techcrunch