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Magic

getmagicnow.com

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Re: Magic

#211

Post by waterlesscloud »

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #197
waterlesscloud wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll find a price point that matches the demand with their ability to supply. The premium involved in using this service is already substantial, so it's not going to be an everyday thing for everyone.

You're missing my point: their service is limited by humans. Every new customer needs exactly one human to address their needs.

Every new customer needs a few minutes of one human's time. They can hire as many people as they need as long as customers are willing to pay the cost of that time. As long as the cost of the humans is something some number of customers are willing to pay, everything is great.

This is an ancient business model for customer service, so I guess I'm confused where you're going with this...

Re: Magic

#212

Post by danellis »

zaroth wrote: post #208
danellis wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CA state law requires you have a Privacy Policy Who does that apply to? Companies based in CA? Companies doing business with anyone in CA?

Both of course! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Privacy_Protection_Act

Interesting. I'm not sure I understand how California can make laws regulating companies in any part of the world.

Re: Magic

#213

Post by zaroth »

vishaldpatel wrote: post #141
cmikec wrote: post #2

Hey everyone - this is insane. My friends and I created Magic a few days ago as a side project and it's completely blown up by accident since then. We're getting stormed with messages and orders. We thought we'd launch it ourselves later if it did well, and other people have been posting it on Product Hunt, Reddit, HN themselves... I'm here to answer any questions, although we've hardly slept!

What are you guys using to manage in-bound text messages? Something like sendsonar.com or something home-grown?

Plot twist: it's the founder's cell phone.

Re: Magic

#214

Post by frakkingcylons »

pbreit wrote: post #145
alansammarone wrote: post #79

I love the absurdly simple way this works. That said, maybe there should be some form of (appropriately simple) authentication on each request, because what if my phone gets stolen/lost?

Degrade the service for everyone to possibly defend against a theoretical problem?

The problem isn't theoretical, just sufficiently unlikely for them to take no action at this point. Consider the scenario where my phone is stolen and the thief transfers money out of my bank account with Venmo (which has no passcode or similar auth). It's unlikely, but not theoretical.

Re: Magic

#215

Post by albertwang »

puppymaster wrote: post #115
[deleted] wrote: post #107

[deleted]

uhm they are not. The text is just a link to a site that uses stripe to collect your CC data.

I wonder how they are able to pay for 3rd party transactions with Stripe? Charging the customer's credit card with Stripe then paying with your own payment method incurs a transaction fee and potentially chargebacks

(Disclaimer: co-founder of Perssist, a tech-enhanced virtual assistant service)

Re: Magic

#217

Post by freehunter »

zaroth wrote: post #85

I love the idea, and the execution, but just one nit -- you say "no hidden fees", but I think bundling the fee into the total price is the definition of a hidden fee . If your examples itemized the fee it would be a different story. Other comments here express a similar anxiety, e.g. how much [extra] am I actually paying for this? Also, I know you're busy, but FYI CA state law requires you have a Privacy Policy. I wo…

Well it's not hidden because they tell you up front, before the order is placed, how much it will cost. If they told you $20 and asked for $25 when they got there, that would be a hidden fee. Like AT&T saying you can get cable for $20/mo, but your cable bill always ends up being $32.88.

Re: Magic

#218

Post by practicalpants »

pinklegs wrote: post #158

From someone who's tried and failed: performing a large amount of high-quality labor for cheap is not a sustainable business model in the West, and riding hype can make you oblivious to that fact. That said, I do hope this team has some amazing trick under their sleeves that has eluded everyone else, because I do want this service to exist.

Agreed, this has obviously got some nice buzz, but never would I want to be the person having to run this business.

Lots of manual work for little fees. They could hire/ outsource, but the quality will drop and prices will hike.

They might be able to find a niche of people willing to pay a lot for simple things they could probably do easily themselves (like ordering food, or booking a flight), and use that extra money to outsource, but something tells me that market is pretty small.

It's interesting, I'm curious to see if this can turn into a company.

Re: Magic

#219

Post by joshmn »

I love this idea, but I'm absolutely terrified of the possible implications from a liability standpoint.

When you guys get slammed with fraud, give me a shout.

Re: Magic

#220

Post by cookiecaper »

danellis wrote: post #212
zaroth wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of course! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Privacy_Protection_Act

Interesting. I'm not sure I understand how California can make laws regulating companies in any part of the world.

They can't, but if you make CA mad and they decide to sue you, you'll be out much more than it would've cost to just copy and paste a boilerplate privacy policy. A great deal of legal mechanics work this way -- sure, someone can't technically make that kind of mandate, but since it costs a lot of money and time to have a court case where that kind of thing gets proven, you're better off just making sure no one even tries.

Pretty much any civil action is similar. Unless it's on a massive scale, ask a lawyer what you should do when someone appears intent on pushing a frivolous copyright suit on you. Sure, you have every right to use that content, but do you have the tens of thousands of dollars (minimum) and months or years in court to prove it? It's practically always easier to just accept that you've been bullied out of exercising your rights and replace the contested content with something that the claimant won't launch a frivolous suit over. Lawsuits are only worthwhile when the workaround is more expensive, which is often a hard standard to meet -- that's why most cases end in settlement.

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