Conversations with Guang Ming Yong, Co-Founder of Social Wok on TechCrunch 50

During this year’s TechCrunch 50 2009 conference in Silicon Valley, our local start-up, Socialwok made Singapore proud by becoming the winner for the Demo Pit in the event. To recap, Socialwok is an enterprise based social networking service to make organizations and companies more productive by helping them connect, share and collaborate within themselves and with the world. While the team is now busy taking the company forward to another stage, we manage to catch up with Ming Yong, the co-founder of Socialwok to sit down with us and tell us the adventures of Socialwok in TechCrunch 50 and Silicon Valley, the new developments to the Socialwok product and what’s next for this company.

BL: Hi Ming, great to have you again on SGE since your last interview with Socialwok with my fellow colleague. Once again, congratulations with Social Wok winning the Demo Pit award in TechCrunch 50. What prompted the Socialwok team to pack up the bags and fly to the US for TechCrunch 50?
Guang Ming Yong: The original aim of Socialwok’s USA trip in sept was not TC50 but meetings at Google that we have arranged for as well as the presentation we had for the Silicon Valley JUG meeting. Hence, we did not plan to apply to TC50 till the last few weeks when the application was due. As Socialwok was not in stealth mode given that we did a version 1 launch in may 2009 at Unconference 2009 in Singapore, our TC50 application was turned down but we were offered a place at the TC50 demopit.

You can view our photo album for TC50 here.

BL: What are the changes in the Socialwok product that have transpired since our last interview with you?
Guang Ming Yong: Since we last interview in June, we focused on finding distribution for Socialwok; we observed that there is a large population of 18 million Google Apps users who are yearning for a social layer to integrate the different Socialwok components like Google Calendar, Google Docs and etc. Hence, we revamped version one of Socialwok to have tight integration with Google Apps and email. Socialwok became the missing Social application for Google Apps users.

Here are some of the key integrations with Google Apps:

• No signup needed. Just login with you Google Apps or Google account at http://socialwok.com
• Share Google Docs/Calendar or any google component in a feed
• Share emails in a feed (compose or forward emails to post@socialwokmail.com)
• Access Socialwok from the mobile web. Point your mobile web browser to http://app.socialwok.com
• Collaborate with external parties outside of your organization using a feed
• Fast consolidate keyword search for your google apps domain.

For a video demonstrate of Socialwok, please visit our Socialwok Youtube video channel.

BL: What is the pitch that your team used to convince the judges that led you to the Demo Pit award?
Guang Ming Yong: We are quite happy that Socialwok won the 2nd day TC50 demopit award as this award is based on the votes by the TC50 attendees. TC50 is a two day conference and each day there are over 50 demopit companies. Each TC50 attendee is given two TC50 poker chips to vote for their favorite TC50 demopit company out of a total of 100 companies during the two TC50 conference days. The demopit winners chosen by the audience would then go onstage to pitch to the audience. There would be 2 demopit companies chosen for each day of TC50 conference.