Why Magic+ instead of Operator?
Magic+
271–280 of 498 posts
Re: Magic+
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Presumably they'll build software to handle common requests quickly. I'm not the OP, but... I guess, but again, where's the software? You can entirely reasonably solve that problem with a well-indexed medium-sized binder and a Rolodex.
That's a bit naive, as with Facebook M this is tapping into the huge market of AI-like personal assistants. We may not yet have the technology to create a Jarvis, but we can make a person a lot more efficient at their job with some clever tools. For example, in the website there's a request that mentions getting a private helicopter booked to LAX in 3 hours. A personal assistant would have to look up private aviation…
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Re: Magic+
#273Based on everything I learned about this space from starting, operating, and later selling a company that does exactly this in the summer of 2014 [1] [2], I'm bullish on this idea. I think it's definitely a step in the right direction and incentives are starting to line up. 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…
If you're bullish on this area, why did you sell?
Re: Magic+
#274Another service for the 1%. This one will go the way of homejoy. These kids don't understand how tight the household budget is for nearly all Americans.
You can smell the elitism dripping in their examples on the site. Private helicoptors, $31 grocery delivery... most people will pay a little extra for convenience, but this is ridiculous.
Re: Magic+
#275I 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.
It will probably take those 10 hours being on old for comcast to pickup. You think i'm joking.
Why wouldn't Magic+ have a relationship with Comcast where they can bypass the queues? Seems like a natural relationship to have.
Re: Magic+
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a very similar outcome with Magic after trying really hard to rely on it. One of their suggested usages is to order flowers for someone, so I tried that on two different occasions. 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 fl…
Thanks for bringing this up. I've addressed similar comments elsewhere in this thread so I'll try not to repeat myself much. - We really feel terrible that some early Magic users had a less-than-magical experience after our initial, spontaneous launch. I'm really sorry about that. I'm glad that you got your refund. If you're interested, reach out to us and we can probably track down exactly what happened and what bro…
> - This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to be able to hold a very high bar for top-tier service and guarantee that you would have it at all times, no matter what.
This is really not addressing the issue in my opinion, it would go a long way if you offered more details on what steps has been taken to improve the service, the process, the monitoring and the reliability of the service.
Saying "Well we know we dropped the ball so we are going to make it more expensive in hopes less people use it is really not an strategy that inspires confidence"
Re: Magic+
#277Hey magic, can we get a UK version of magic?
Re: Magic+
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to automate the parsing of queries to produce leverage here. Every time they answer a query successfully, I would imagine they add that to an internal repository of information. So the technology play would be less on the "figure out what they want" front and more on the "deliver exactly what they want" front. Need an on demand helicopter in NYC? Great, Magic knows just who to call for that because the…
that isn't technology though, you just might use technology to keep track of it (wiki/whatever). Maybe that's what paul meant by "technology" but that isn't a Tesla play by any stretch of the imagination.
Shaving 5 or 10s off average handle time with smarter tooling is absolutely technology. In fact, it's probably the most widely used technology on the planet.
As someone who works in that space, helping people do similar things with greater accurately and quickness delivers a surprising amount of value... when you're talking about deploying that across 250+ desks.
The target isn't to throw technology at 99% of all requests, but to deploy it on the smaller portion of the process it's suited to. The only thing faster than 100% machine is 99% machine + 1% human.
Re: Magic+
#279Seeing this makes me feel ashamed to be a part of the tech industry. This is why people despise the 1%. Show some taste/humility/discretion. A "service" like this is so narrowly focused on the ultra rich, that it should be marketing in high end magazines/direct outreach.. not on hacker news.
Oh please, give me a break.
I'm with this guy.... get over it.
Re: Magic+
#280Good 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…
Have you thought about having a separate privacy policy for your Magic+ customers? Specifically regarding the potential for you to sell data to "Other companies whose products or services may be of interest to you" which is a pretty broad spectrum.
I do understand how the software layer plus having multiple assistants working on a single person makes it "safer" than the SPOF of a traditional assistant (and I'm sure you've already thought of ways to have the software handle all PII while the assistants just support with the bits that require manual labor)
However, I feel like the killer feature of this kind of product should be Trust. That's worth paying for.
That plus the minimalist website copy and secrecy around operations makes it seem a bit niche for the startup crowd. And that sucks, because I want the AI assistant winner to be a newcomer, and not the usual suspects :)