Magic • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic

#21

Post by cmikec » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:33 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #11

Arthur C. Clarke famously said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This maxim has proven robust over decades. But now are we now so used to interacting with layers of technology and automation that sufficiently trained humans could seem in any way magical? I don't agree, but a scary indictment if it were true. Clever business name though.

I love this quote. Thanks for reminding me of it! :) For me, the "magic" refers to the magic moment that I experienced when we prototyped this internally. Despite the power of today's on-demand services, I've always felt them to still be rather frustrating. Sometimes the drivers cancel, they get lost, you still have to manage them. We tested this by delivering the product to each other internally, handling all the annoyance of dealing with these services behind the scenes. The result feels like magic. Just text in what you want...and it appears.

Re: Magic

#22

Post by darrelld » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:33 AM UTC

Loving the simplicity of it all. I just need to text a number. No app to install and grant access to my phone, no website to go and sign up to with my facebook account. Nothing.

Just text a number and get what I want. It solves my problems by giving a path of least resistance to getting what I want. A company doing a similar thing was handing out fliers over the summer and they had an app to install. I thought the idea was cool but never got around to installing it.

I just added this phone number to my contact list for when I'm reading to use it.

Re: Magic

#23

Post by cmikec » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:33 AM UTC

carlosdp wrote: post #17

cmikec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Yeah, honestly, after deciding to launch this we released a really minimal landing page which I saved here: http://getmagicnow.com/index-old.html - As you can see I made that in about 20 minutes, and was not expecting this. After someone posted it on Product Hunt I spent whatever time I could polishing it up. In general though, I agree, simple websites are much better. Thanks for the kind words.

fyi, there's a typo in the FAQ: "we'll let you know the total price so you can confim "

Thank you. Fixed!

Re: Magic

#24

Post by cmikec » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:34 AM UTC

darrelld wrote: post #22

Loving the simplicity of it all. I just need to text a number. No app to install and grant access to my phone, no website to go and sign up to with my facebook account. Nothing. Just text a number and get what I want. It solves my problems by giving a path of least resistance to getting what I want. A company doing a similar thing was handing out fliers over the summer and they had an app to install. I thought the id…

Thanks. Please let me know how you like using it. That's exactly what we were going for, and I hope that the experience persists throughout.

Re: Magic

#25

Post by cmikec » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:35 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #19

hackaflocka wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you scaling it up?

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Yeah, and that. :)

Re: Magic

#26

Post by tomasien » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:35 AM UTC

Good idea, you're blowing up so get off this damn forum and go fulfill some orders. The best to you gents/ladies.

Re: Magic

#27

Post by btilly » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:37 AM UTC

Sounds like General Services from the story We Also Walk Dogs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs for the story.

I'll bet they don't invent antigravity devices though! :-)

Re: Magic

#28

Post by cmikec » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:37 AM UTC

iamshariq wrote: post #4

Great service for a consumer. But as a business - how do you earn revenue?

This business started out of a need that I had. I've hired numerous assistants for myself in the past to handle these types of tasks for me. I've always been OK with paying a premium to have thing handled for me like magic. I've had my assistants do work for other people too to simplify their lives, and often times it was for things just like this. Here, we realized that instead of having to pay a salary, or even a monthly fee, we could do it on a per-item basis. I didn't know how popular it would be, but it seems that other people in addition to me are interested in the idea of paying a premium on top of per-item prices in order to have them handled like magic. Maybe it's not for everyone, but there is definitely a market.

Re: Magic

#29

Post by gk1 » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:37 AM UTC

cmikec wrote: post #10

gk1 wrote: post #7

Great idea. Can we find out how much it costs, or do we just have to trust that the quoted price for the task isn't too much above actual cost? Or does it not have any service fees? The site is really vague about pricing.

This is a great question. We are still trying to figure this out right now. Our vision is to be a service that handles everything - and that means everything from ordering food, to ordering clothes, to booking a one week's vacation in St. Thomas. The fees obvioulsy vary. Any ideas you have about doing this in a more straightforward way would be welcome. For now what we are doing is thinking about what would be reason…

First thought that comes to mind: Look into how Virtual Assistant services do pricing... Whatever it is, I'm sure it could be improved, but it might be a good starting point. I imagine they either charge a % of the cost (eg, milk+courier+0.15(milk+courier), or a subscription (plus cost of each transaction of course), or time-based (how long it took to complete the request). Maybe urgency-based?

Or a combination of any of above.

Re: Magic

#30

Post by cmikec » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 2:37 AM UTC

leemac wrote: post #16

I've seen something similar before, very cool idea! My question is from an operational standpoint, who are the "operators"? Given the side-project nature of the site, are you up all night answering/ordering these things?

It's safe to say that this is no longer a side project.