141–150 of 498 posts
I just signed up to see if they could renegotiate my Comcast price for me. It turns out you have to buy either 10 hours at $100/hour or 40 hours at $75/hour to get started. That's way too steep to try something out.
I just signed up to see if they could renegotiate my Comcast price for me. It turns out you have to buy either 10 hours at $100/hour or 40 hours at $75/hour to get started. That's way too steep to try something out.
I was just reading about a company started by 2 brothers that does exactly this. If I can remember the name, I'll post back. Maybe I saw it in Bloomberg? Anyone?
Looks like the reception isn't doing too well. I remember when Magic launched here on HN and it BLEW up. I was one of the people who tried it out. I live in NYC and actually had a poor experience. The first two times, I said "hey I want a sandwich with [x]" and I got it but it took a lot longer than if I just clicked the necessary buttons on Seamless. Then I kept getting random calls from time to time from pizza deli…
The first time around, I asked for flowers, and got a picture of some flowers that they could send to my recipient. I didn't like the flowers in the picture, and so they picked another set of flowers per some feedback from me. The flowers arrived, and the recipient was touched, but my lingering feeling was that I would have spent the same amount of time ordering online, and it would have been easier to find the right kind of flowers if I had done so.
The second time I tried to order flowers was a complete disaster. I was ordering them for a special occasion, and Magic had told me they would be delivered within an acceptable time frame. However, the flowers never showed up. I was not notified that they had not showed up - instead I learned that they had not showed up after one of the more embarasing birthday calls of my life. Magic was very nice about it, refunded me and delivered the flowers late for free. The error may not even have been their fault. However, the extra layer of abstraction between me and the flower delivery person in this case seemed to make the whole situation worse.
I use a lot of different do-things-for-you services these days. In theory Magic is a service I should be totally hooked on, but these bad experiences killed it for me. What's the point of a service that does everything for you if it makes things more complicated or harder to get done?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just noticed something strange in the screenshot. It seems to imply that Magic will work over iMessage. As far as I know, there is no publicly available API for iMessage so I'd be curious to know how this works.
It's an SMS, not specific to iMessage.
A lot of skepticism here, which is understandable given the somewhat unbelievable scope of what they are promising. I'm a very active user of Magic+, so I'll give my perspective. (and of course I've been working with them from the beginning at YC, so you're also free to discard my opinion as biased) For me, Magic+ is basically the impossibly good personal assistant, kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man, or Emily in The De…
The "I'll do anything for you by SMS" space (I call it the "Houdini app" space) space affords the middle-to-upper class in first world countries (where labor is much more expensive) the same power you'd get if you were in a country where labor is much cheaper.
Example: in Lebanon, where I grew up, the middle-to-upper class of the population has: a stay-at-home maid ($200/mo), a driver ($300/mo), and a concierge at the bottom of their building ($30/mo), who will take care of pretty much anything for you. This is possible because labor is so cheap. I'd say you have to be in the 0.1% in the US to be able to afford this (since labor would cost you much more), but in third world countries, it's within reach of probably the top 15% of the population (by income).
I think the most successful concierges have a "fixer" mindset - you give them a very loosely defined need, and their job is 1) coordinating and finding a solution, and 2) actually following through and executing on it. The fixer's advantage is 1) the end user trusts them, trusts their taste, and there is a pre-existing relationship with the customer, and 2) the user has a general idea of what they can and cannot do.
The real value Magic brings is that they can be the fixer for your day-to-day life. If I were Magic, I'd change the pricing to $200/hour, but only charged if the task is actually completed. That way, the incentives really line up in that 1) they're more incentivized to complete the task successfully, 2) users trust them a lot more and know that they will get their money's worth, and 3) they develop the "fixer" brand, where Magic gets you what you want, and you only have to pay if it gets done.
Lots of important technologies start off as "toys for the rich" - I could see that happening here too. What I am curious to see, is how they plan on bringing the cost of the service down. Or if it's possible to get a big enough market share at this price point.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351
[2] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/my-disruptive-d...
$100 an hour sounds expensive. $1/minute might be a better published price. And also suggest that it's priced in minute increments.
Thanks for the feedback. You're right, you bring up a good point that isn't explained as much on the website as it could be. We actually track time down to the second and display really detailed reports to users every day about how the time was utilized. Quite often a simple request can end up being $3-$4.
$100 an hour? Fuck that. I'm currently living abroad and don't speak the language very well. So I hired a virtual assistant who speaks the language and English. He charges $7.50 USD an hour. I only pay him for time it takes to complete my tasks. I rarely even pay $100 for the whole month.
I just signed up to see if they could renegotiate my Comcast price for me. It turns out you have to buy either 10 hours at $100/hour or 40 hours at $75/hour to get started. That's way too steep to try something out.
I was just reading about a company started by 2 brothers that does exactly this. If I can remember the name, I'll post back. Maybe I saw it in Bloomberg? Anyone?
Some co-workers have raved about https://www.fancyhands.com/ for this kind of stuff, not sure if that's any different from Magic, though.