Magic+ • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic+

#471

Post by davecraige » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #452

davecraige wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acc…

> I spent over 60 hours of intense work to do a project for free for them that they requested. That might be where you went wrong.

At the time, Magic was one of the hottest startups in the Valley. I was willing to hustle hard to get my foot in the door.

But I agree with you, I need to be more judicial with my time in the future.

Re: Magic+

#472

Post by Dirlewanger » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

nlh wrote: post #352

I'm trying to figure out why I (too) am having a strong negative reaction to this. Let me think out loud: I'm fortunate enough to have a real personal assistant. She's amazing, she knows me, she does fantastic work, and I pay her a fair and reasonable wage (including health care) that's far less than $100/hour. So let's put me in the category of "people who can afford a personal assistant" but not quite in the catego…

>So the whole thing feels....dismissive.

Welcome to the future. This is what happens when you have a highly concentrated, morally bankrupt nouveau-riche out-of-touch with greater society drives "innovation". It's only going to get worse as the bubble continues.

Re: Magic+

#473

Post by danielvinson » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

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…

It would be reasonable to consider that there are many use cases where this is truly a useful product.

I participate in competitive events (video games and card games) where I generally only have 10-15 minute gaps to leave throughout a 15 hour day in a foreign city. I would happily spend $20 to have somebody find the best available food which can be delivered to me and order that food. I wouldn't ever want to pay for an assistant, since I only would need this service 2-3 times per month.

And that is the exact market for Magic+ - people who would happily pay for a personal assistant at that rate, but don't have enough work to benefit from hiring a real assistant. I've spoken to friends seriously about hiring an assistant which would split their time to help 8-10 of us, with us equally splitting their salary. This is a more elegant solution to that.

Re: Magic+

#474

Post by ThinkBeat » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

cdata wrote: post #143

joslin01 wrote: post #34

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 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…

I think given the Magic business model that they are responsible if the flowers dont show up.

That is the deal right? Pay us and we take care of it.

Not Pay us and make sure it gets done yourself.

Re: Magic+

#475

Post by chippy » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #314

I think it speaks to the whole PG inequality essay. This is clearly a catalyst for a more natural equilibrium. It seems to me the main service provided by Magic+ is liberating money from those who have more than they know what to do with.

Nice observation - it certainly seems like there is some correlation between the two "events"

Re: Magic+

#476

Post by dang » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

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…

I look at the data on these posts all the time and can assure you that the interest in this one is genuine. There's nothing implausible about a startup attracting attention on HN anyhow—especially when the startup started on HN.

People are much too quick to jump to a "shilling" explanation when other people's interests differ from their own. We need a name for this bias.

Re: Magic+

#477

Post by dang » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

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.

> Welcome to Hacker News, where people's conflict of interests are not disclosed.

A statement about Hacker News that could just as easily be made about the world in general doesn't carry any information about HN. Many (perhaps most) of the claims I read about HN fall in this bucket.

> If you can pay $100/hr for an anonymous 'personal assistant' you can pay for a real personal assistant.

Isn't this a matter of batch sizes? I might pay $100 for the occasional hour but couldn't hire a full-time personal assistant. I wouldn't hire a full-time accountant or dentist either.

Re: Magic+

#478

Post by kyllo » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #401

toddmorey wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a decent amount of innovation that can make the assistants more efficient, so you can improve profitability without driving down wages. But there's also something else: Since a high percentage of services will likely end in a transaction, there's a huge opportunity to become the Amazon-scale retailer of services. I find I don't even google products I want to buy anymore, I just immediately search Amazon. Amaz…

You can't scale a $100/hour service to the level of Amazon, there simply aren't that many people with that kind of money.

I'm pretty sure Amazon would find a way to reduce the price.

Re: Magic+

#479

Post by aagha » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

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…

> For me however, $100/hr is totally worth it since it effectively increases my leverage and enables me to get more done in less time.

Also, because you can afford it.

If you only need assistance a few hours a month, I can understand the need for such a service, but why not just hire a virtual assistant that speaks perfect English, and works 40 hours a week for around $2000 a month (or less!). Multiple companies, including Zylun.com offer access to such talent.

Re: Magic+

#480

Post by newman314 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

tghw wrote: post #153

newman314 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Great idea although it would likely take longer than that. I would however pay for an outcome based solution to this as it's a pain to call Comcast every year. Renegotiate to $X for Y and I'll pay.

Have you seen https://www.billfixers.com/ ?

No. Checking it out. Have you used this before?