Not sure if this is because of how quickly this blew up, but well done.
... And thanks. I thought I was the only one who thought the video fad was dumb. Now it's just a toll booth for getting a product presented, and I never watch them. How about others? Do you find videos actually useful or are they just glitz?
Just what they can do for me right now. Hat's off. Good luck.
Okay this looks really interesting! And with no full-width+full-height responsive image, I can proceed... it's something different, something not exactly 100% what you would expect...
So intriguing... so what, dear MagicMan, is it? Would you kindly answer dear Sir, because I'm uncertain, and curiously in need of an answer before I text myself down the rabbit hole...
IT JUST LOOKS SO INTERESTING!!! ;-)
Also, I know you're busy, but FYI CA state law requires you have a Privacy Policy. I would like to know how long you retain records and who you are sharing them with before doing business with you!
Corollary: When you're pinching pennies is not the time to use a concierge service.
The whole point of a concierge service, such as this, is to have someone on call to whom you may say "Here is my problem. Make it go away." Such services generally come at a much higher rate than Magic appear to be charging.
I think it is because the wording of the texts make it seem like they are quoting the price of the service you are requesting, but the quote actually includes their fee. There's nothing wrong with that, but for some reason I didn't realize it on first read -- maybe a small wording change can make this more clear.
Who does that apply to? Companies based in CA? Companies doing business with anyone in CA?
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!
I stopped using them after this bad experience. I asked them to send about $100 of good chocolate as a gift, and they just sent a $10 bar, 10 times. Duh.
Anyways, I felt a very good sensation looking over this. Probably because it's just such a PITA to do things like order pizza. Gotta talk to people, decline sales questions, etc. What a relief to not have to deal with that day-to-day stuff. Or just going out to the store or grabbing lunch before the place closes. A personal assistant I pay on demand for anything? Sweet.
"Anything you want" makes it sound like people can use it like they'd use Siri.
How do you plan to handle security related dangerous items? For example, an user may ask you to deliver a package taken from one place to another place and you may arrange that but that package may contain dangerous/destructive/harmful materials which may be against law of the land where you operate.
You can ask user to confirm contents but he/she may lie and faithfully you may try to deliver and in between you may get struck in legal issues. If the origin is well known or reputed enough, then risk may be less but otherwise, there is an element of risk. Have you considered it? and how do you plan to handle it safely? Thanks.
Here's hoping you can scale up fast enough to outpace demand and give everyone a good first impression.
"I think it is a great idea that has potential but I personally wouldn't use them because I can't find anything about them on the website. Looks like a scam."
"They need to re-design their website so it doesn't look like it was slapped together in 10 minutes and add an about page so we know who they are."
"Not even a business at this point."
"This stuff kind of annoys me actually. I get the minimal product concept to test the market but when stuff like this is pushed out there it makes consumers very wary."
"These guys will take this to some bay area VC's and probably get funded because it blew up on Reddit and HN with a bunch of other techies. Meh!"
"It is going to take some serious $$ to get a service like this going. The support alone for handling inbound texts and having reps look for and book deals is a very big undertaking."
"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy."
... What.
This just doesn't compute. In what mindframe does this ever make sense as a complaint? If you're creating new jobs, even if they're low wage, you're just giving people more choice - they can now work at one more place than before, no one's forced into that, it literally can't do harm. And direct transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the poor is a positive, right?
I'm so confused.
It's interesting the contrast of first impressions. HN is often fortunate to receive a behind the scenes look into projects. Here we have a first-hand discussion with the creators commenting and answering questions, such as their previous businesses [1] and general updates [2], which helps us gauge the business more than perhaps a general user encountering the site. From the top-rated posts it also appears many here are so used to typical design choices that there's an appreciation for the more straight-forward approach.
That sort of comment annoys me actually. Is it not great that "wealthy" people pay for all of those service jobs? Out of all things, I literally can't see any problems with this. Unless the wages are below living wage of course,but it looks like the commenter has a problem with service jobs in general?
(the minimum was from the sushi place, not Magic)
It falls apart at a certain global scale, but I'm sure the business has pivoted twice by that point.
Nicely done.
Not sure about surprise additions, but isn't it bit overpriced for one person quick lunch?
Maybe I'm projecting onto "the general public" when I make this generalization, but performing operations on a smartphone (aside from call/text) are oft accompanied by the very real risk of squandering your time away. Especially when a browser is involved.
There is something elegant about the interface of a dumb phone, especially a flip phone: You pull it out of your pocket, whip it open, type your text, send it. And then crucially, you flip it closed and stop thinking about it. This is the key. You're using it when you're using it, and you're not when you're not.
Even grander generalization and possibly controversial opinion: I hope that consumer technology begins to cater more to those of us who wish to use technology in this way - as a tool that you pull out of your pocket and promptly put away upon achieving your ends.
https://usv.com/post/an-idea-about-texting https://www.ouvre-boite.com/messaging/ https://medium.com/@chrismessina/conversational-commerce-92e... http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109389515411/your-phone-interfa... http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-t... http://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/
A text based or "messaging" UI is often simpler and more effective than fumbling with some complicated direct manipulation UI.
"Chetan Sharma counted the total active SMS user base is now up to 5.9 Billion humans or 91% of all mobile phone owners, in May of 2012. So SMS is nearly 6 times larger by reach than Facebook. SMS is 3 times bigger than TV and has 2.5 times more reach than email. As less people place voice calls from their mobile phones than send SMS text messages, this is the most used telecommunication method - and most used digital media - on the planet. Yes, humble little SMS."
Open Standard -> broker -> Walled Gardens?
My perception of the cost of text messaging for something which requires a dialogue on a portable device is unnecessarily high, compared to a less than 1 minute phone call. This isn't just due to the slowness of typing vs voice.
All of the examples of this service are conversational. Conversational idea description through text messages is generally slower and more ambiguous than through voice.
When trying to get our thoughts communicated into somebody else's thoughts, we need feedback to let us estimate how close the other person's thoughts match ours, before pulling the trigger on a transaction. In text, the packetization of messages delays all opportunities for feedback, and has a more limited bandwidth of expression compared to vocal inflection and body language.
For sending simple status notifications to others, text works great. For unambiguous, unidirectional communication, text works great. When time spent communicating doesn't matter, bidirectional texting is fine. For dialogues where you describe something you want done, text sucks.
When I discuss these issues with my peers (I live in the SF Bay Area), I find that many of them share my concerns, to varying degrees. Does anybody know if such a service exists?
It seems to me that it shouldn't matter where your income comes from, the social safety net should be there regardless. The ACA was a step in that direction by requiring people self insure if the did not get that benefit from their employer. I think we need to go even further and separate safety net benefits from employers. Then people would be able to choose whether they want the job security of a W-2 position or if they prefer the flexibility of a 1099 position without having to sacrifice the safety net.
(Side note: I'm a 1099 contractor who self insures. I have a lot of difficulty imagining going back to a W-2 job.)
If you want all that, you should move to a country where all that is required by law, or lobby towards these laws being implemented in your country. However, you must realise that all that has very real costs; and businesses that are only marginally profitable with current setups will not exist, causing the people working there to lose their (low, but positive) income.
If you just want to help, it might be better to use whatever service exists, and spend a bigger amount on charity.
Are you also against open source? It allows companies to rely on unpaid labor (with no benefits) and directly competes with software that does pay benefits and could potentially put them out of business.
Don't worry - we have a plan to handle it. For now we are closing down free registrations so that we can focus on delivering the product to the awesome people who have signed up so far and who are using the service.
I've replaced the phone number on the page you see here with an email opt-in waiting list where you can sign up to be notified when Magic is available to you.
In the meantime, I have added a Stripe button for $20 after the email opt-in where you can gain access now if you want to get in right now.
Thanks everyone!
How could you create a solution like this in less than 2 days? Training operators (who where how many, paying a call center?), how are you managing customer data together with those operators etc. Sounds like a logistic nightmare to me, unless you and 10 friends are sitting day and night in your apartment..
Apple has 800m credit cards on file (1)
In one fell swoop Apple could own the local delivery market, shocking how perfect of a concept / execution this is.
(1) http://www.businessinsider.com/credit-cards-on-file-apple-vs...
Even if 10% of their users started using their service to require "magic", there is no way in hell even a company like Apple could scale an operation like this that's bottlenecked by humans.
Just text a number and get what I want. It solves my problems by giving a path of least resistance to getting what I want. A company doing a similar thing was handing out fliers over the summer and they had an app to install. I thought the idea was cool but never got around to installing it.
I just added this phone number to my contact list for when I'm reading to use it.
As a non-coder, I love reading the responses of programers here. "Automate this!" "There is no way to scale." "This needs AI."
As an outsider looking in, my idea to scale is similar to Uber. Have workers that can sign on to work whenever they have the time. The workers handle the orders and receive a cut of the fee you charge. It would be great if you could have some kind of rating system where the consumer could choose who they work with, but I'm not sure how to make that happen with SMS.
I'm not saying this is better or more cost efficient than automation. I just see it as a solution to their current problem.
Uber is looking to automate, but check out their current valuation. They can afford to do so all by scaling with humans.
I'll now wait to get hammered by HN. :)
The problem is how do you pay such workers? If that's per order cut, they will want to make as many orders as possible inevitably degrading the service quality. And it usually takes a single bad experience to put people off of such service.. Actually, I don't see how this can scale well, imho, they should market more like "personal assistant on demand" and include monthly fees or pay per assistant's time, what also could solve a questions-that-do-not-result-in-order problem.
What I do find.. "decadent"... is people like you, judging masses of other people on the basis of what they find interesting or useful. Especially when you can't see past the low hanging fruit and aren't able to grasp any potential a service might have.
Piece of advice: If a majority of people are interested and finding use in a service, re-examine your own evaluation skills before telling everyone else to re-examine their lives.
I'm aware that this may all seem a bit dramatic when we're talking about pizzas, but the mindset of the elites is important in this case. Services like this encourage not knowing where your food, water, clothing etc. is coming from.
Anything that is more convenient than things were previously can be seen as decadent. I suspect so much that everyone takes for granted today would have seemed decadent to people 50 or 100 years ago.
Maybe there's a number of people that such a service would really help out? I don't know, but single parents are one group that comes to mind. For helping them get items that they can't easily go out and get themselves because of having to stay at home with the kids. It's hard to predict how new services may end up being used and being useful.
Maybe the current cost is too prohibitive for many people at the moment (i don't know what they charge and don't live in the US so wouldn't know how to judge the figures anyway), but if such a service proves useful and popular maybe the prices will come down. Anyway, I don't see anything inherently wrong with a service that not everyone can afford.
While businesses have to be focused on the markets that have money, I feel like this has gone to far; how can this be used to solve the problems of people who are busy but do not have money?
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.
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.
I'm sure they've thought about it since it isn't their first business, so i'm really curious.
I don't agree, but a scary indictment if it were true.
Clever business name though.
For example since my company pays for my phone I tend to use them for things like getting a taxi wherever I am. "I want a taxi in X city". And they can do this via SMS or phone call, they can send the reply via phone or via sms if you want, included in the service charge.
Essentially they can do what magic claims, with operators standing by 24/7, for a service fee that comes from your phone operator.
We've had this in Sweden for many, many years now. I don't even remember how long but I know that some time 6-7 years ago they started advertising that you could call them (or text them) about any stupid question you might have and they would try to answer it.
If this magic really is new to the states then I predict it will explode just like our swedish alternatives have here.
I'll bet they don't invent antigravity devices though! :-)
I need Magic in my life. I hate ordering, filling out forms, etc. Pease scale this thing hard and fast. This is Uber-level fantastic. Better than that, even.
And then I was reminded of Uber. Isn't Uber in the same sort of service model that requires a human driver for every request, but is doing super successful? (let's not talk about regulation.)
The more I think about it, the more it appears a good business model. It definitely helps users save time and worry, and as demand is growing, it can simply hire more trained service men, and creates huge job opportunities.
This is a platform that enables/accelerates service to people by people. I'm optimistic of its future.
Unlike Uber, this service doesn't require any physical presence in a city, just knowledge of services available in that city. So in theory they could launch in Mongolia next week. But, so could a competitor. Unlike Uber's (contracted) fleet of physical cars which provide a material barrier to competition, all you need here is knowledge and a Twilio account and you're in business.
There is a risk here that whatever they (and other startups) do in this space, the gorillas just come along and clone them - e.g. Amex, Visa/MC, etc - but offer the service for free. They can run their concierge services at a loss since they are attached to a profitable card services business. This is similar to robo advisory financial services where Wealthfront etc now face margin squeezing, maybe even life threatening competition from Vanguard and Fidelity.
I've used services like this for years and this exact business model (sms concierge) pops up every few months. I've worked out the per unit economics and it's a tough business. At some point due to automation of background services it will become possible. Maybe these guys will raise a huge round and take that gamble. Maybe the timing is right and they will succeed (along with many competitors rushing into a new industry), or maybe it's still too early by a decade and they will fail. But some day with AI and automation I think this model will work.
I could see this happening in many business models. Obviously Magic may fail entirely (it appears to be pretty much just an idea currently) but I could see AI replacing the human components.
I'm not sure how I feel about all of this.
Requester: "I want two pepperoni pizzas, one with extra cheese."
AI Response: "I can have 3 pizzas, two pepperoni, and one cheese (with extra cheese), delivered from Dominos for $24.15"
Requester: "No, I wanted two pepperoni pizzas, with extra cheese on one of them"
Human steps in after the "no" is detected: "Sorry, I misunderstood your request, I can get two pepperoni pizzas with extra cheese on one of them for $16.50 from Dominos"
Requester: "Yes, thanks."
======
It'll just be a matter of time as the automation spreads to less and less mundane topics.
The user confirmation makes sure the automation didn't screw something up, and if the user doesn't responds positively to a certain threshold then humans take over. The threshold can be dynamic depending on accuracy of text recognition.
Can we find out how much it costs, or do we just have to trust that the quoted price for the task isn't too much above actual cost? Or does it not have any service fees? The site is really vague about pricing.
> It's completely free to chat with Magic. When you order something, we'll let you know the total price so you can confim it before you are billed. There are no hidden fees, and tip is included.
You have to confirm the price. It sounds like you can decline if you think it's unfair.
I'm just thinking about requests that ask for a recommendation for a product or a service that won't be purchased right away (like finding a certain kind of restaurant with certain parameters, but not getting food delivered from it, or finding a certain kind of professional service without immediately contracting for it).
Or for that matter factual questions like "Who won the 2014 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature?".
Would this somehow look like "I found 3, and I'll tell you about them for $5, OK?"? Will people be more resistant to paying the fee if the fee is the only item they're paying, rather than bundled with the price of some other transaction?
This needs to be really awesome to be good, really awesome. So awesome people get dependant.
Call Comcast for me and have them configure my Cisco
DPC3939B for bridge mode
Go stand in line at the post office and retrieve
my package with tracking #xxxxxxxx
My iPhone's screen is cracked. Take it to the mall
and get somebody to fix or replace it, whichever's
cheaper.
Bring me some Mongolian BBQ with the following
specifications.
I would pay _a lot of money_ for that.
Especially for stuff like "Dispatch someone credible-sounding to stand in line and negotiate as my agent with large shitty ossified organization X," where X might be a post office, utility company, embassy, real estate, etc, where their user experience disrepects my time.
The dev who sits next to me has been trying to buy a house for a month, and he spends ~50% of his time on the phone with home inspectors, contractors, the title office and similar, basically telling them trivial facts or participating in silly naggy negotiations where they're basically gambling that he won't push back on the twentieth little crappy line item this week.
This is a super-real pain point.
Obviously the concept of concierge service isn't new. But getmagicnow.com is based on a brilliant insight: "people don't want to sign up for TaskRabbit or any other website, they just want to text a number". All the details of scaling the service and how it will work out can left for later. Right now they should be patting themselves on the back until their arms get tired.
Normally I tip for pizza delivery, Instacart, etc. Do you make sure that's included for me?
Cust: I want 100 bananas
Magic, to Instacart: how much does 100 bananas cost?
Instacart: $100
Magic, to customer: Sure! Does $109.19 sound okay to you?
Cust: sureI wish the Magic team the best!
It could be valuable to just record all the transactions and how the agents filled them. What the customer asked, what kind of questions the agent asked, did agent Google for the service, what steps did they take on web sites to perform the order etc. If you have this kind of data for thousands of transactions that might have some value for Google, Apple or other companies working to build digital assistants.
For more complex/expensive purchases one added value thing for customer could be that the agent knows how to find a good deal. There's for example a service (or maybe just a forum) where people can post their travel plans and airline ticketing experts compete to provide the best ticket options.
One obvious income source that comes to my mind is affiliate fees and companies paying for you to introduce them for new customers. This is of course also difficult one since customers would like you to recommended the best provider and not the one that pays best affiliate fees.
> We will send you a 128-bit encrypted HTTPS link via SMS that you can click to enter your credit card number. We do not store your credit card number. All payment processing is handled by Stripe.
Also, for something people are wary is a scam, saying "be careful what you wish for" in your first reply is a little bit ominous!
Why not turn this into an excess capacity market where you enable anyone to easily offer this service themselves...especially if they have local insights.
This seems like a good way for anyone to Make a few bucks in their free time.
[1] http://www.lightforcenetwork.com/sites/default/files/%5BHein...
"Miss Cormet reflected to herself that the prosperity of General Services and her own very substantial income was based largely on the stupidity, lack of resourcefulness, and laziness of persons like this silly parasite"
There is now a profusion of heritage (like http://www.1240.it, http://www.892424.it, etc).
"Want somebody murdered? Then DON'T call General Services. But for anything else, call.... It Pays!"
I'm curious to see what you'll do to handle exceptional cases. I live in the boonies and am asking for a philly cheesesteak right now.
2. They may just be able to say it's not available and still maintain a positive experience for 99.9% of customers.
3. It doesn't seem like they're charging such a large fee that I expect them to do something crazy for me... I expect value in some proportion to my payment. Amex concierge might get the cheesesteak for a customer who spends 6-figures with them but not 4-figures, for example.
But will it scale?
To me, the obvious value of your business is in being able to train Operators up to the Magic corporate standard. If you can do this while growing the service, you've got a real winner - especially if you put up a web front end to make it possible to become a Magic operator anywhere in the world. I'd be quite happy to do this kind of service work from home - as long as I had the tools to support me, and I think ultimately thats where your real value is going to be - certainly growing the customer base is valuable, too. But being able to train/service Operators who can do the job properly is going to be the key to it all ..
Obviously, I realize they can't, I just wonder how often their answer to the query is "Sorry, we can't do this".
Overall, I think it's a great idea but the fact that it's bottlenecked by humans will make it very, very hard to scale (and you can already see this as the web site has a big banner saying the service is currently restricted due to high demand).
Still, it's clear from the testimonials so far that these guys have their heart in the right place and they really want to achieve maximum user satisfaction. Kudos!
Because they're just using other services to get you what you want.. i.e. flowers, groceries, pizza, etc. - they just call a florist/supermarket/pizza joint/etc. local to the requester.
What examples of requests can you think of that can't be served anywhere in the US?
For someone who gets really overwhelmed by too many texts, this seems like a lot of back and forth compared to just googling to find the number of the restaurant and ordering.
Just a thought for when this begins to scale: vetting of the people ordering the stuff. They will have names, email, delivery address and an idea of the income level/lifestyle of the person ordering. I'm assuming credit card details are on a payment system and not available to the people handing the requests.
PS: any customers complained about what they got yet?
Also, they're using a Stripe account managed by this company: https://bettir.com
One little nitpick: the blue chat bubbles on the site gave me the impression you'd be using iMessage for supported phones instead of SMS. (This matters to me just a bit because I have a limited number of SMSes per month.) I totally get why you would just stick to SMS.
Still happy to use your service, but it did create just the tiniest bit of initial dissapointment.
A blog post after all of it cools down would be a fun read. :)
I assume bitcoin is going through Stripe as well, though if not, that money could come to Magic more quickly. The problem then is that the vendors likely don't accept bitcoin...
Maybe the very cheap design discredit the whole project.
Why does this one attract so much attention?
Good work guys, and I agree with everything that everyone else said about the simplicity of your landing page, and the controversial design decision to actually communicate information.
Congrats on being so successful so far, but my advice would be to sell out before the investors loose interest!
- people using the service just to figure out the price of something (and then declining)?
- people not being happy with what they got delivered (perhaps rightfully so), and wanting their money back?
Still, looks like a very nice idea, might try it if I ever need something :)
How would they respond to this? Their own meta-service?
Where do you draw the line on "anything"?
Also, this whole thing is April Fool's joke, right?
If you are lokking for some jack of all trade to help you , or looking for some one in france.
I'am in ...
Btw good luck.
Bussiere AT gmail.com
Good job on seeing it.
now you can safely order food to be delivered when driving home. or laundry pickup, or whatever.
"siri, text magic, i want a large pepperoni pizza delivered to my home in 1 hour."
The FCC has been cracking down on the use of long codes in marketing. Not sure about an app like your's though... But you probably should move to a short code anyway.
There are also very strong requirements for how opting in, opting out, etc works.
http://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing-forward/2013/01/02/s...
When you guys get slammed with fraud, give me a shout.
Boom! there goes every single bit of something resembling "privacy" you had. Magic.
Etc? Really?
