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Magic+

getmagicnow.com

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Re: Magic+

#441

Post by corin_ »

jaksmit wrote: post #286
cmikec wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before we rolled out Magic+ today, we did quite a number of split tests regarding prices and messaging. We also have had a private beta of Magic+ going for some time. Venturebeat as well as a few others seem to have screenshotted our website when it was in various stages of being split-tested.

@cmikec it wasn't just split tests on the messaging. if you signed up last week you ONLY got texts telling you to sign up to a payment plan. If you sign up today then it offers you the paid version OR the free version

That's still split testing of the messaging... in that one message gives different information about their services than the other. Different information being leaving out the free option. Clearly they wanted to see if a higher % signed up to the paid option depending on whether the customer knew about the availability of a free option.

Re: Magic+

#442

Post by antaviana »

paul wrote: post #106

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…

I think that knowing them personally makes a big difference on your decision to use their service, regardless of if you are an investor or not.

People tend to give their business to people they trust (or to people recommended by people they trust).

Just like I think I'd be wary to contract a faceless lawyer to handle my next divorce, I think I'd be wary to contract a faceless personal assistant to handle any important aspects of my personal or business life unless I'm really desperate.

So if my rationale were applicable to many others, Magic+ main challenge would be solving how they can overcome the trust roadblock.

Re: Magic+

#443

Post by corin_ »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #77
relaxatorium wrote: post #29

The example they're trying to use to show you that prices aren't crazy quotes a $30+ surcharge for having groceries delivered.

I really loved the $3,750 helicopter ride to the airport, like your average joe has that much money to blow so they don't have to sit in traffic. I guess I'm just not in their target demographic?

There's also business use cases to think of. I've often had to spend what on a personal level would be an obsene amount of money but in a work context was justified. Most common examples for me have been very long taxi journeys, last minute and therefore way overpriced flights, and same day international shipments. I've never needed a helicopter, but for example if there had been some screw-up that meant I badly needed to get an unreleased product to a press event in the next few hours then sure I'd have spent a few thousand on a helicopter rather than waste the hundred thousand spent on the event. (Side note: sounds like a "should've been better prepared" situation, but I've seen this happen with so many companies in the tech industry. Normally solvable by expensive taxis or couriers rather than helicopters, though.)

Re: Magic+

#444

Post by sail »

mosselman wrote: post #386
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? A personal assistant is someone that you know, that you vet, that you can gauge the skills and reliability of, and that you can hold genuinely accountable. And you are comparing hiring this person on a full time basis to an ad hoc and in many cases inferior "assistant" who is only available for a fraction of that time with no guarantee or indication of quality ahead of time. And not just that, but only extremel…

You completely hit the hammer on the head with both this comment and the parent. I just assume that a big amount of 20-25-ish developers here that make $180.000 are excited at the prospect of having a personal assistant to match their other unreasonable status enhancing purchases. As if any 'rich person' would spend any amount of time texting some random employee and give them access to his e-mails. If I were rich an…

You are discounting a strong trend: expensive products become commodities.

Plus there are degrees of richness. It's easy to name examples where rich people have been trusting their personal information to faceless entities for years.

> to match their other unreasonable status enhancing purchases

You don't know the purchases of the audience you are referring to.

Re: Magic+

#445

Post by branchless »

beachstartup wrote: post #189
paul wrote: post #106

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…

> Obviously the $100/hr price point puts it out of reach for most people $100/hr for competent assistants 24/7/anywhere is a steal for any kind of organization like investment banks, enterprise sales, consulting firms, that send their people into the field to do high pressure, deadline-driven work.

Anything work related will be subject to confidentiality and is therefore utterly useless for all the examples you give.

Re: Magic+

#446

Post by kdamken »

The service is $100 an hour, which is bananas, but I guess that's not too surprising when their target customer is someone who casually buys two iPad pros like a normal person buys packs of gum.

Re: Magic+

#447

Post by davecraige »

ksml wrote: post #346
davecraige wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mike, As you know I had a very bad experience with Magic as well. I worked for you for free for a week and on boarded 63 new customers for you. You guys arbitrarily deleted my account, and abruptly shut off my autopay donations to numerous charities we had set up together. Then you went silent and wouldn't return any of the ten messages I sent to you asking for access to my personal records and information regarding…

For the curious, looks like more info here: http://www.davecraige.com/magic/

Yes, thank you. That is the whole story. You can read it if you want.

I spent over $3,250 traveling to Silicon Valley. I spent over 60 hours of intense work to do a project for free for them that they requested.

I delivered them a beautifully custom 38 page research report that you can see here: http://f.cl.ly/items/3f3u1e14273P2v2a1Y2J/CAP1.pdf

I was treated like a second class citizen and tossed to the side. My account was deleted. I contacted all 4 of the founders. Not one would respond. They went dark.

I would hope that no one else gets treated as poorly as I was and experience this type of disrespect.

Re: Magic+

#448

Post by davecraige »

RP_Joe wrote: post #328
davecraige wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mike, As you know I had a very bad experience with Magic as well. I worked for you for free for a week and on boarded 63 new customers for you. You guys arbitrarily deleted my account, and abruptly shut off my autopay donations to numerous charities we had set up together. Then you went silent and wouldn't return any of the ten messages I sent to you asking for access to my personal records and information regarding…

Thanks for posting that.

Thank you

Re: Magic+

#449

Post by hellameta »

interesting_att wrote: post #393
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #353

Ok. I must seriously be missing something here. I'm usually the last person to complain about shilling, because even on the very rare occasions that I am confident that some sort of "astroturf" operation is going on I usually find it to be a somewhat valid or at least entertaining form of promotion and don't care that it is clearly just advertising. But seriously, this thread is absurd. I truly do not understand how…

Welcome to Hacker News, where people's conflict of interests are not disclosed. I agree with OP- this is an absurd tool. If you can pay $100/hr for an anonymous 'personal assistant' you can pay for a real personal assistant. This is another example where rich SV-elite are making out of touch predictions on the market.

Out of touch may be a tad bit harsh -- I see it as being not aligned.

When you live in SV and make your 125k+ salary you're going to come up with a lot of pretty damn good useful things for yourself -- but not everybody else.

I am from an immigrant family and parents combined income was ~75k for my entire life (in Canada, no less, where we pay much more for the same products as our neighbors down south). You can reduce the cost of access or improve the experience but at the end of the day we simply didn't have the disposable income to even make use of Amazon in any kind of life changing way. It just wasn't that big of a deal until I started making the kind of money that the benefits of Amazon became obvious.

Most of SV hype is around products that simply don't apply to MOST people. This is also why you REALLY notice when someone strikes to the core of universal affordable (if not totally free) services - Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Uber etc. The big successes (in the consumer space) are ones that have the blanket appeal across income ranges.

For now, Magic+ is not one of these.

I kind of just wrote straight through and realized I didn't make any solid 'points' but hopefully something resonates. The basic idea is that most things being done by SV are STILL things that most people CANNOT afford.

Re: Magic+

#450

Post by IgorPartola »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #413
pricechild wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, Amazon's UI has a long way to go and doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon. Haven't people been dismissing them over their UI since the beginning of time? And yet it works and is successful?

The sad thing is - UIs generally don't matter if there's anything else making your product special. You can make your users as miserable as you want, and they will still use your service. Companies know it and prioritize effort accordingly.

Agreed. See Craigslist.
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