251–260 of 498 posts
Are you going to support bitcoin for Magic+? Currently looks like you need a credit card to register.
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An hour of my time is worth more than an hour of their time costs. And that's without counting the headache of doing it. Considering it would save me money for less than I would "spend" doing it myself, I don't see how it's not an application for most people.
$100/hr is a salary of $208,000 which only about 5% [1] of household incomes exceed that. Certainly not "most people" [1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-p...
Progress and efficiency is great, but I wonder if we (you and I, common devs) are digging our own graves.
Isn't this just an overpriced Zirtual? https://www.zirtual.com/plans-pricing
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Thanks for the feedback. Magic has been in an interesting position as a startup ever since our website went viral in Feb. 2015. Starting then, we've had more demand than supply for our product every single day. That's why we never iterated our original landing page -- marketing was never our biggest problem, in fact it was our smallest. That said, I completely agree with you, that there would be much more powerful wa…
Even if the time is broken down, what's the incentive to be as efficient/cost-effective as possible? I get that cost is not the primary driver here but surely it is not open-ended. Also, invariably with a complex task, there's going to be a lot of dead time spent waiting while coordinating.
If we aren't efficient and cost-effective, we won't be able to retain users and our product experience will be severely harmed. Whether we are charging hourly or not, it must be the case that the value we offer the user is greater than or equal to the cost that the user is paying.
Needless to say, at Magic we hold ourselves to a very high standard when it comes to product quality and value. And, we use the product ourselves and we pay hourly.
Good morning, I read all your email while you slept. Your wife is very pretty. I wrote a message to your son telling him you loved him. He responded "you're not my real dad". I also hired that Visual Basic expert who emailed you yesterday. Don't worry, I already charged your AMEX $230 for the trouble.
This would be a real risk if you hired an ordinary personal assistant. This is actually exactly the sort of challenge that traditional assistants pose and that Magic+ is designed to fix. Magic+ is actually not just one person, but it's a software-driven service with a highly trained team of professional assistants that are held to a very high bar. They are managed, supervised, and trained by us so that you don't have…
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…
I'm really sorry that your initial experience with Magic last year wasn't ideal. We have come a long way since those initial days. Believe it or not, we actually did not plan that original launch -- rather, we released the website and number to a few people and it went viral practically overnight. We set up a waitlist as quickly as we could, but there definitely were some people in the beginning who did not have a go…
Q: Where is Magic+ available?
Anywhere you need it. Magic+ is there to make your every desire and need happen, wherever you are.
# Does this mean that we can actually use it in other countries like the UK? Do we need to use an area code?
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…
>but my expectation (as an investor) is that as the tech improves they will be able to bring down the price while maintaining or even improving the quality of the service Call me skeptical, but where exactly is the tech involved? Currently this is just text messages going to people + people doing the things. One possibility would be through AI (a bit of a weasel word most of the time, honestly), but Google and Apple…
Excuse me if this is a bit naive, but I've always had the impression the whole point of Magic is to build the AI side. Maybe not communicating back to the user... perhaps that part's always done by a human, but a human with machine-aided decision making. I would love to see the internal interface that Magic's personal assistants are using today.
Doing every task by hand with people probably doesn't scale. Maybe for $100/hr it does, but that could just be their way of targeting tasks for executives because they have a higher percentage of profit. I expect they're using the data from requests today as training to recognize narrow patterns to be automated tomorrow.
Edit: I found this in their FAQ.
> Q: Do you use AI to fulfill my requests?
> Magic+ is fulfilled through a combination of top-tier executive assistants and concierges, paired with intelligent software. Our unique combination of humans and software is what enables us to consistently deliver an unparalleled level of service.
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> such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is making me seriously think about what Magic's target market is. What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? I know people who I would consider "wealthy" on a first-world scale but this see…
> What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? Depends heavily on how often they did it. A quick estimate suggests that a request like that would cost a few hundred dollars at most: the cost of the food itself, packing it in an insulated box with cold packs (some restaurants can do that themselves, and if not, a shipping service could most likely do that quite cheaply), and about $…
Hell, we were asked to take some pastries from our city roughly 700 kms home for family on Christmas, and although we carefully packed them, stored them with freezer-blocks in an insulated container, and carried them completely supervised on our lap in an aircraft cabin the entire way, they arrived worse for wear...but still kinda presentable and edible.
If I hired this out to an overnight courier for $100, + $100 for magic, + $100 for food, i wouldn't be half surprised to find it had been forcefully jammed into my letter box or met with handling/turbulence during transportation...
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They claim to have fulfilled 100% of requests. Seems like a lie, though.
I find it hard to believe Amy Poehler or Tina Fey would meet with some random guy who has some service calling them up...