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Magic

getmagicnow.com

341–350 of 558 posts

Re: Magic

#341

Does no one else consider the idea of this horribly decadent? They give as an example, ordering a delivery pizza for you, which is already a decadent activity and something you can accomplish with a single phone call anyway. Maybe for the rich high-flying silicon valley types, your time and brain space is so valuable that this service makes sense. But if that is the case maybe you should re-examine your lives.

I'll elaborate a bit. I'm not concerned with criticizing this service or its users. It triggered my previous comment as it serves as another example of the life of well off westerners becoming one more step abstracted and insulated from reality, which is something that ought to be resisted. The more removed you are from your source of food, water, clothing etc. the more wasteful the process of obtaining it is in term…

All this is well and good, and I agree with it, but it doesn't really have anything to do with this service.

> Services like this encourage not knowing where your food, water, clothing etc. is coming from

You don't know where those products are coming from. The ingredients in the food you're ordering have been gathered industrially, processed industrially, probably moved between four different countries, ended up at your city's warehouse, were ordered in bulk by a grocery store in your city, were once again ordered in bulk by your local restaurant, were prepared by a chef you'll never meet, packed by some cashier you probably haven't seen and only then does it reach the delivery boy.

And you're telling me adding one more layer on top of that is decadent because you don't know where your food is coming from? Please. The general point is excellent and worth talking about, but it simply doesn't apply here.

Re: Magic

#343
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?? No, not sarcasm at all, I'm dead serious. Often I'm just on my phone at night, no tablet/laptop. So say I want to get some food. I've got to go find the damn website. Remember a login maybe. Or deal with some JS-laden thing that doesn't render smoothly on my 6" Android. Sort all that shit out. Wonder if I have cash for a tip, cause I feel obligated most times. Or calling. I gotta actually dial, talk to someone…

If you look at exogen's example, there was the same back-and-forthing that you get on the phone or with a website. Need to spend $11 more for delivery? exogen made it easier and said "surprise me", but if he didn't, cue a back-and-forth over what would make up enough of an extra order. Alternatively, what if exogen wasn't willing to increase the order price by 50%? Back to the drawing board for another round at a dif…

I imagine I'm gonna setup Magic. Then before I'm packing up to go home, I'm gonna text "Get me a lamb korma, hot, and some naan from Little Delhi, cost + $12 for delivery is fine". Then they're gonna say "ok, btw total is $25". By the time I get home and change, ding-dong food's here.

Of course, it'll depend on their execution. They're gonna have to keep a reputation of not totally ripping me off, like Amazon. With Amazon, I don't ever, ever, price compare. If I was gonna buy a 256 GB SSD and Amazon said it was $300, I'd go "well shit, I guess they went up" and that's that. If they keep abusing me, I'll figure it out, so keep the abuse low, and if I get pissed off, comp me and make me feel special.

There's no reason Magic needs to be slow and involve lots of back and forth so long they don't give me a reason to distrust them.

Edit: But you're right. If it's always slow, always back-n-forth, always weird pricing I need to check, then it wouldn't be great. So I'm just gonna hope they do a good job.

Re: Magic

#344
I see almost no barrier to entry for this idea and as some commentors pointed out- this has been done before- although today does feel like the right time to succeed because these other services are maturing.

Why not turn this into an excess capacity market where you enable anyone to easily offer this service themselves...especially if they have local insights.

This seems like a good way for anyone to Make a few bucks in their free time.

Re: Magic

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you OK with people using Magic for things that don't result in a purchase? Something like "Is the 4:30 train from Greenwich to NYC late?" or "What hours are my local DMV office open?" "Anything you want" makes it sound like people can use it like they'd use Siri.

That could be done by charging a standard fee for the operator's time spent searching.

Or a Magic Gold premium membership, if people want to ask non commerce questions beyond the first three free ones.

Re: Magic

#346
How would you deal with the following cases?

- people using the service just to figure out the price of something (and then declining)?

- people not being happy with what they got delivered (perhaps rightfully so), and wanting their money back?

Re: Magic

#347
I noticed when they give you a URL to follow the parameter is just a counter!

I opened http://getmagicnow.com/pay.php?p=1 then clicked the button, it showed this message:

Here is the VIP phone number to access Magic: (408) 7x7-xxx7

Do NOT release this phone number to anyone outside the VIP level of service.

Is this a vuln?

Re: Magic

#348
Idea to scale:

As a non-coder, I love reading the responses of programers here. "Automate this!" "There is no way to scale." "This needs AI."

As an outsider looking in, my idea to scale is similar to Uber. Have workers that can sign on to work whenever they have the time. The workers handle the orders and receive a cut of the fee you charge. It would be great if you could have some kind of rating system where the consumer could choose who they work with, but I'm not sure how to make that happen with SMS.

I'm not saying this is better or more cost efficient than automation. I just see it as a solution to their current problem.

Uber is looking to automate, but check out their current valuation. They can afford to do so all by scaling with humans.

I'll now wait to get hammered by HN. :)

Re: Magic

#349
post #137

I just decided to try this out in Seattle. Here's how it went! http://brianbeck.com/images/magic.png (the minimum was from the sushi place, not Magic)

This is horrible compared to my daily experience using Seamless. Why would a person craving sushi want to exchange 8 text messages and then click on a web link and get sushi 2+ hours later?

Re: Magic

#350
This seems like another one of this startup ideas that will blow up, sell for $X,000,000 in a few weeks/months, then die as the fad wears off.

Congrats on being so successful so far, but my advice would be to sell out before the investors loose interest!

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