Hey everyone - this is insane. My friends and I created Magic a few days ago as a side project and it's completely blown up by accident since then. We're getting stormed with messages and orders.
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!
In our previous businesses we have scaled large customer support teams efficiently, and we also have handled a lot of online chat-based systems. As long as we can charge appropriate fees, this should be solvable. So far, so good.
You said you created it a few days ago. Do you happen to have many helping hands to handle the deluge of messages you will be getting? Coz first impression is going to be the last impression.
Are you OK with people using Magic for things that don't result in a purchase? Something like "Is the 4:30 train from Greenwich to NYC late?" or "What hours are my local DMV office open?"
"Anything you want" makes it sound like people can use it like they'd use Siri.
There was a UK service called AQA that would answer questions for £1 back in the mid 2000s. They started off super super useful, but quality degraded enough as they scaled that it was no longer worth it. Used to be able to say "which shops in a 20 mile radius have xus in stock", or "who should I complain to about the service in xyz bar" and get great answers, but as they automated it more and more you'd just get back vague info
I was briefly an AQA employee. You were paid per question, so all you really cared about was how quickly you could send an answer and move onto the next question. The quality of the answer didn't matter, unless the customer complained and got a refund, which virtually never happened.
Yeah, we've been receiving a lot of requests like this. Right now we are doing our best to handle them all because we believe that happy users will be purchasing customers. We'll have to see how it goes.
So I used to use something like this with Amex's concierge service. Like getting a Wii on release day, or getting a gift somewhere.
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.
Probably because it's just such a PITA to do things like order pizza
Is this sarcasm? I can't see how wrangling an order through an intermediary is easier than just ordering from the local pizzeria's website.
Not to mention that it takes a non-trivial time to confirm - in exogen's example above, it was 69 minutes plus delivery time. Small questions about relatively trivial things really drag out that confirmation time.
Often I'm just on my phone at night, no tablet/laptop. So say I want to get some food. I've got to go find the damn website. Remember a login maybe. Or deal with some JS-laden thing that doesn't render smoothly on my 6" Android. Sort all that shit out. Wonder if I have cash for a tip, cause I feel obligated most times.
Or calling. I gotta actually dial, talk to someone. Deal with all their questions if I want combos or the offer and I'll save $2 if I just say yeah, and what's my phone number and address again?
I realise I should get over this. That I'd do better in life (especially if I'm gonna sell my own software) if I got more comfortable just calling people and telling them what to do.
Meanwhile, I'm already imagining how awesome this is gonna be next time I'm in SF. I leave the office, start walking home. Text Magic and say "hey get me some X from Y". Get home and unpack my mind and someone comes and gives me food.
If it's an hour confirmation time, that's not as magic, but it's not a show-stopper. With less coordination than making the order myself, I can just pipeline things to work out.
Perhaps this reflects badly on me or is a commentary on society or laziness or I dunno. But I'm pretty fucking happy to imagine I can have someone else unlock the city for me if I'm not feeling up to it.
Here's how sick I am: I would order lunch via this every day, versus trying to get myself to go at the right time. Not too early because of the lines, but not too late because then they run out of good stuff or close. But I should probably get out a bit more so I won't use it every day just because of that. Otherwise I totally would. Hell, if they are streamlined enough, I'd even do it to order a cup of frozen yogurt (I'd probably pay $15-20 twice a week for delivery alone). I do prefer to get out and walk and take breaks, but sometimes it just doesn't work out, or it's too far, or whatever lameass excuse.
Agree generally, but I do wonder why in 2015 this has to be driven manually by humans. I understand we're flexible decision makers, but we're also a significant cost in these sorts of processes. I can appreciate this definitely follows the "do things that don't scale" line.
If there was a standard by which browsers stored payment and delivery details, a little beefed up from what we have now, would that get us part way? And then an endorsed way of interacting with an ordering system that can answer questions by default (no newsletter signup, no insurance, no warranty, default shipping, etc).
Loads of security issues, but we're going to have to solve this sort of thing eventually.
I'm pretty sure Google Chrome has an API hidden away for payment info. Google seems to market it towards ecommerce developers (that's how I found out about it), but I can't find my documentation on it. Plus it's not on track for any sort of standardisations.
If you look at exogen's example, there was the same back-and-forthing that you get on the phone or with a website. Need to spend $11 more for delivery? exogen made it easier and said "surprise me", but if he didn't, cue a back-and-forth over what would make up enough of an extra order.
Alternatively, what if exogen wasn't willing to increase the order price by 50%? Back to the drawing board for another round at a different shop. It seems like a slow way to get food unless you're particularly laid back about pricing and what arrives, or you know exactly what's available at the shops you want to source from.
I imagine I'm gonna setup Magic. Then before I'm packing up to go home, I'm gonna text "Get me a lamb korma, hot, and some naan from Little Delhi, cost + $12 for delivery is fine". Then they're gonna say "ok, btw total is $25". By the time I get home and change, ding-dong food's here.
Of course, it'll depend on their execution. They're gonna have to keep a reputation of not totally ripping me off, like Amazon. With Amazon, I don't ever, ever, price compare. If I was gonna buy a 256 GB SSD and Amazon said it was $300, I'd go "well shit, I guess they went up" and that's that. If they keep abusing me, I'll figure it out, so keep the abuse low, and if I get pissed off, comp me and make me feel special.
There's no reason Magic needs to be slow and involve lots of back and forth so long they don't give me a reason to distrust them.
Edit: But you're right. If it's always slow, always back-n-forth, always weird pricing I need to check, then it wouldn't be great. So I'm just gonna hope they do a good job.
In your home town, it's probably not a big deal. But if you're travelling in random towns, I could definitely see this being useful. Bonus points if you can tie it into a 'what's cool to do around here right now' service. Or 'what's the best craft beer place near here'. That kinda thing.
In general it was fairly reasonable. On the console, they managed to find a store not too far away that had stock and reserved it for me. No fee. Their travel agency also seemed pretty useful.
Best concierge thing was going to a packed restaurant, told it'd take a long time without reservations, making a call and turning around to "right this way". No fee from Amex. They really wanna sell the flattery/status idea to get you spending more and feeling the $450/$5000 annual fees are worth it.
FWIW Amex Business Platinum card holder here. Their Concierge got us a reservation for 6 people at 8 pm, at the French Laundry, the next day.... That's as close to magic as I've ever seen.
I had Platinum and the option of the Centurion (black). People I know with Centurion cards actually just don't use them that much after an initial "fun" period of showing off. Using them at clubs, for instance, is just a great way to get extra charges thrown in, since people will guess you aren't carefully reviewing your statement and have extra money.
OTOH if you don't mind coming off as a dick, you can pull out a Centurion card and try to bully/bluff people with a "don't you know who I am" kinda deal. Though I did love the one time a friend tried this and the clerk just laughed and said "we don't take Amex". Also, other banks are issuing "Black" cards so there's a lot of people trying this not even being Amex holders.
Centurion used to come with more benefits, but they've been pulling them back and making it more of a show-off "I'm so elite" kind of thing. (A big blow was losing Continental elite status, since United is Chase's bitch.) They're building out airport lounges now to help compensate. And in Toronto Pearson, because Canada is just so incompetent, airlines don't have faster lines for security, just Air Canada and Amex. Rather annoying if you're a United 1K or otherwise paid for first class. That's probably the only reason I'd consider getting an Amex card again.
Nowadays, even random VISA cards will have concierge services, because it's fairly cheap, underused, yet makes people feel special. And for the cost of a Platinum card ($495 for primary, then $195 I think) you can use a lot of other services. And Centurion cards were $5000/$2500. I think you could just carry $5000 in cash and get the same kind of "respect".
(I haven't used Amex in years. Despite paying on time, always, and having a runrate of over $250K a year, they did a financial review, requesting my tax/employment records. I told them to fuck off and that was that.)
I had a great experience with the concierge if it was an extremely simple task with clearly defined results. If I asked for recommendations/to make a vague hotel reservation, its absolutely worthless. I had an operator actually begin reading off the first 50 hotel names until one "sounded good". I let her read a few dozen of them to see where this was going before I eventually told her I would book it myself.
Hey, just here to recommend that you use or otherwise build a CRM interface around the SMS conversations. This will allow you to scale the number of messages without being overwhelmed by operator costs.
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.
That was an immediate concern I considered as well. Like, a drug front that sets up a little website that looks like a restaurant or something. Only customers would ever really know about it, but Magic service providers would find it when someone asks for it. Customers place "secret code" orders with Magic. Magic unwittingly delivers drugs (or whatever contraband) throughout the city.
But...then I concluded that surely it's ultimately cheaper and safer to just hire your own drug couriers. Given the slightest risk of discovery, they're less likely to reveal anything about the sender or to know the identity the recipient, unlike Magic.
So yeah, some people will always slip some shady stuff through every now and then. But I don't think Magic is the best solution to any of those illicit problems. No illegal arms dealer is sitting around thinking, "If only I had someone to deliver all these gun orders, I'd be rich!"
"We'll order what you need from the appropriate service (e.g. DoorDash, Instacart, Postmates, etc.), and deal with them"
All of these services handle the delivery when you order directly through them, so I don't think Magic is accepting a hand-off from them and then adding an extra leg to a trip. It sounds like Magic is just acting as a middle-man in these cases. I don't see anything on their site which suggests that they ever actually handle your stuff.
I know a guy who buys cheap cars, fixes them, and resells them. All through craigslist. But whenever he buys a car, even one he plans to keep for himself, he immediately lists it with a huge markup. Just today he got an offer for $3200 on a motorcycle he bought last week for $2000.
Yeah, it's partially that I've (so far) had exceptional luck with my vehicles! In my 15 years of driving I've only had maybe 10 parts changed. I did the easiest myself--an alternator, a couple of serpentine belts, etc. I sometimes change my own oil.
Sometimes I don't know enough to diagnose a problem, though, and I take it to my buddy. He usually does the fix and I watch and help a little, but I don't know enough about the whole engine and how it all works together, at this point.
I want to buy a car to take apart and reassemble, but I don't currently have a space I can do that in. Though it just occurred to me I could get a storage unit, probably.
Presumably by taking a percentage for acting as a convenient middleman. (At least eventually, even if they aren't now)
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: sure
This business started out of a need that I had. I've hired numerous assistants for myself in the past to handle these types of tasks for me. I've always been OK with paying a premium to have thing handled for me like magic. I've had my assistants do work for other people too to simplify their lives, and often times it was for things just like this. Here, we realized that instead of having to pay a salary, or even a monthly fee, we could do it on a per-item basis. I didn't know how popular it would be, but it seems that other people in addition to me are interested in the idea of paying a premium on top of per-item prices in order to have them handled like magic. Maybe it's not for everyone, but there is definitely a market.
I love the idea. I currently pay minimum wage to a student friend of mine when they have time, but when they're busy paying the equivalent to a service would suit me fine.
I have no idea how viable this is, but if you could find an effective way to extend this to "we will deal with your suppliers who only work by phone, and charge you for the privilege of not having to make the stupid call yourself" I would be very interested ... but probably useless as a customer, since I'm in the UK. It's just I already pay for fulfillment work and wish I could easily pay for utility company wrangling, and if somebody can validate the model hopefully somebody will do it over here eventually :)
have we seriously gone so far down the rabbit hole that you're wondering how a service that takes your credit card and charges you for deliveries... makes money?
Besides questions about revenue and such, can I just say that I absolutely love the landing page. No gimmicks, no parallax, no videos, no fake testimonials, no hero images, no marquees. Just good copy.
Not sure if this is because of how quickly this blew up, but well done.
Thanks! Yeah, honestly, after deciding to launch this we released a really minimal landing page which I saved here: http://getmagicnow.com/index-old.html - As you can see I made that in about 20 minutes, and was not expecting this. After someone posted it on Product Hunt I spent whatever time I could polishing it up. In general though, I agree, simple websites are much better. Thanks for the kind words.
While you have changed the copy and a few other things a little, I was quite amused at how people on ProductHunt considered it untrustworthy mostly through virtue of using Times New Roman rather than a nice Sans. An interesting example in the psychology of running counter to fashion..! :)
The typeface of the older design appears as Helvetica on OSX. Edit: realized this is likely due to changing the default font years ago, unbeknownst improving the experience of sites like these. New typeface is certainly an improvement either way.
Not just the design. No Terms and Conditions, no incorporation, no IDs of owners/operators - really doesn't seem like a legitimate business (despite money being handled by Stripe).
Make sure top phone # is tappable on mobile browsers.
Examples that don't make me question your ability to deliver - airline example seems to be hiding complexity (I question it as I read it), others really good
If you visit the direct link: http://www.getmagicnow.com/access.php without adding an email address it still says that "You've been placed on the waiting list!". Simple error, but easy to fix so there is no confusion. Great service!
Payment pages should really be linked to an order ID of some sort, without which customers shouldn't be allowed to pay. Otherwise, lots of things can go wrong. Depending on how they have configured things on the server side, a customer could change the amount being paid and the system would consider the ticket paid, cheating them out of money. Or a customer could follow an old link and wind up paying twice if they thought it didn't go through the first time.
I'm not joking, click on it and try to pay. It shows an invoice of ($5,000), a.k.a. $5000 negative dollars. I didn't enter real payment information to see what happens next because of really idiotic interpretations of what constitutes "hacking", but it is a really bad design choice on their part that took me about half a second to find.
Founder, if you're reading this: was this an in-house build or did you outsource this?
The answer is probably they spent around two days building this before demand grew left them zero time to improve infrastructure. Which is more or less good.
Less good? Infrastructure breaking because of load is one thing (concurrency/DB issues) but nothing like this should ever be exposed to the user on general principle.
How come you removed the part of the FAQ that mentioned your fee? I think everyone knows you have to charge one and we're totally cool about it. Did you just feel that subject was best saved for later in the signup process, or did you want to keep the door open for alternate means of revenue?
We noticed that people were more confused by the ambiguity of the nondescript fee, than us just saying that we'd tell you the total amount. You are right though, we do need to figure out a better way to explain this. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.
"We quote you one simple price that includes everything: The goods, the delivery, any expected gratuity, all service charges including our own, and any applicable taxes and fees. What you see is what you pay."
Hm, well here's a startling difference between the HN and Product Hunt community.
The PH comments:
This website looks extremely untrustworthy, purely from a design standpoint. I feel a lot of potential users would be put off by this!
Interesting idea. Terrible site design. Unclear if they're charging for this added convenience.
This was pretty funny, actually. They saw the old version I mentioned above. I was surprised when someone posted it on there and I was actually glad that the reaction was lukewarm, because we didn't think we were ready to launch.
I was under the impression a lot of people use it for idea generation/competitive intel & that (in marketing terms) PH is a (small) traffic/link hack...
In other words I'd be interested to find anything on the quality of its traffic.
We launched one of those landing-only email-catching product pitches on Product Hunt and Designer News. It went amazing. We never even topped #1, yet we got lots of useful feedback and more than five hundred emails of potential customers, some of them high-profile (think @google.com or @abc.com)
> Not true, Product Hunt delivers quality traffic, with high-level people who are hungry for products and convert very well.
Are you a human being talking about other human beings, or a "market opportunity" about-talking "quality traffic" that "converts very well?" I should write a "quality traffic" bot with "good conversions," then post it on Product Hunt.
That commenter at PH could tell the original design took 20 minutes, and if you only have resources to allocate 20 minutes to a product page design, how good can the product be? I think there are more in this community would agree about the original design without completely writing off the product's potential.
Well, I agree with it. "Anything you want, just give us your credit card number". No explanation of who they are or why I should trust them. Hell, they even accept Bitcoin!
I suspect just like the concierge at a hotel, the cut comes from the provider of the service (a dozen roses for 100 bucks - they can afford some affiliate fees from that)
+1 no giant full-width+full-height responsive image
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...
Its also refreshing that afore mentioned good copy got right to the point and told us what they do. No silly vaguenesses about a coming awesome product that they never really describe and then some email sign-up so that they can notify you when they actually have something to sell you.
Just what they can do for me right now. Hat's off. Good luck.
... 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?
Annoying glitz too if they include information in the videos that isn't in text form on their website. Videos play at one speed, I can't fast forward the video if I'm a faster "video-watcher" like I can with reading. And if I'm on a VPN I'd rather avoid loading the video altogether if I can avoid it, which is what my browser plugins are for.
Well, perhaps I could just watch the videos faster, interesting thought experiment.
> Do you find videos actually useful or are they just glitz?
If I'm legitimately interested in a service and want to know how it works, sure, but if I just want a quick overview to decide if I'm interested I'd rather have something simple like some text and images.
I hardly ever watch product videos. I'm usually in locations where It would be rude and I don't want to put in earphones just to find out what's going on. But I'm a curmudgeon, and may be an outlier.
I will happily join you in outlier-land. I want to be able to read - and quickly grok - what a product is about. Needing to watch a video to understand a product is a marketing fail, IMO.
I'd join that too. I never liked videos that are just some person reading from a script. Just give me the script, I'd rather read it at my own pace and time, and I don't care if you really want to be youtube-famous.
thinking that everybody prefers reading
is a typical programmer bias. A good number of people will prefer watching a video. Same with voice, most programmers prefer email or chat for work related discussion. Almost all the sales people I know would rather pick up the phone
and sort the issue by talking.
When I want to know what a product does or how I might find it useful, I prefer text. I don't have to wait for a video to get to the point.
However, when I've decided to actually try it out, I find the video extremely useful as I expect it to demonstrate the onboarding process for me (ie how do I get started quickly).
My vote goes for the short 1-minute video with understandable presentation of how the product works and solves my problem rather than reading paragraphs of text.
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.
This is a great question. We are still trying to figure this out right now. Our vision is to be a service that handles everything - and that means everything from ordering food, to ordering clothes, to booking a one week's vacation in St. Thomas. The fees obvioulsy vary. Any ideas you have about doing this in a more straightforward way would be welcome. For now what we are doing is thinking about what would be reasonable on the fly. Sometimes it's more than people think, i.e. if someone wants milk delivered to their house in Wisconsin, we have to call a local courier, etc. However we've found people are willing to pay more than you would think, too.
First thought that comes to mind: Look into how Virtual Assistant services do pricing... Whatever it is, I'm sure it could be improved, but it might be a good starting point. I imagine they either charge a % of the cost (eg, milk+courier+0.15(milk+courier), or a subscription (plus cost of each transaction of course), or time-based (how long it took to complete the request). Maybe urgency-based?
Why do the fees vary? Why couldn't you have flat min fee + % of total cost? Am I missing something? I feel like pricing transparency is key to scaling quickly here.
Presumably what their fee covers is their work arranging it. I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to charge much more for ordering a plane ticket than a pizza; it's not so much more effort that a percentage makes much sense. On the other hand, "get me a Philly cheesesteak delivered" (which someone mentioned) may entail both "find me a cheesesteak" and "find me a courier" - so you charge more because it's more effort.
I think the most important aspect of pricing is that your stated prices are itemized. That way you'll build trust with users.
As for pricing, perhaps a flat rate per request ($1?) that comes with up to 5 minutes of operator time for free. Then any time past 5 minutes could be billed in 5-minute blocks, perhaps $2 each (base price) and tiered up by order price (I dunno, maybe $3 for $500+, $5 for $2500+, $8 for $15000+). Also, you could charge predefined flat rates for any aspects of the order that can be automated.
Again, the important thing is that you're clear about what you're charging and why.
My bold suggestion would be to not do what other posters are suggesting about making pricing clear and itemized. As I've said in another comment, I think this service mainly fulfills an emotional need, not a rational one (and that's not bad for a business at all), so make your customers feel luxurious. Bean counting isn't luxurious. Do exactly what you do now, just handle the request and state the price. Getting people to think about pricing by having pricing listed and itemized will just ruin the experience. Besides, people prone to bean counting will quickly figure out this isn't worth it. Don't be Amazon, don't race to the bottom. Just find a way to scale your fee estimation process to stay reasonable enough without bothering your customers with it.
> 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 saw, but it doesn't say how their fee structure works. I would rather not have to compare their quote with the original price every time just to be sure I'm not being dealt a 50% "convenience fee."
My thoughts exactly. I have no idea what the "tip" is and if it perhaps varies depending on what service I'm requesting, time of day, whether my phone number is even or odd, etc. It would be nice if this was more transparent.
It seems to me that their target market is people who read the quote and go "I don't care enough about this to look elsewhere" - i.e. people who care if they're acquiring sufficient value for money+time spent, rather than people who care that they're acquiring the most efficient use of their money.
If you're concerned about minimizing the price, you probably shouldn't be using a service designed to charge you for a few minutes' work. The target market for this thing is people who are looking to trade money for time.
I like the one cost quote. Perfect. Things are worth what people will pay for them.
They quote, you either find it's worth it, or not, no worries.
Seems to me, there will be people who value their time low, who will not want to pay so much, and others who will value their time highly and will pay.
Scaling off the latter crowd might be easier to do and capitalize on.
Arthur C. Clarke famously said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This maxim has proven robust over decades. But now are we now so used to interacting with layers of technology and automation that sufficiently trained humans could seem in any way magical?
I don't agree, but a scary indictment if it were true.
I love this quote. Thanks for reminding me of it! :) For me, the "magic" refers to the magic moment that I experienced when we prototyped this internally. Despite the power of today's on-demand services, I've always felt them to still be rather frustrating. Sometimes the drivers cancel, they get lost, you still have to manage them. We tested this by delivering the product to each other internally, handling all the annoyance of dealing with these services behind the scenes. The result feels like magic. Just text in what you want...and it appears.
This is what used to be called "concierge service". You can still get it with, for example, high-end American Express cards, or from firms which specialize in providing it.
Judging by the examples on your site, you've succeeded in bringing concierge service to (sorry) the masses, by pricing it much lower than competing offerings.
Congratulations! You have a highly viable MVP. Good luck scaling it out!
My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I'd have to find the number (or put it in my phone..), then speak to an operator, and then trust that they could deliver on what I expect.
This service is based on SMS though, and I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info (address, credit card etc) so that I wouldn't have to keep repeating it. I'd still have to trust that I get what I want, but the crucial speaking to an operator component is reduced to a fire and forget SMS. I'd use this if I was in the States.
> My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I'd have to find the number (or put it in my phone..), then <text> an operator, and then trust that they could deliver on what I expect.
> This service is based on <calls> though, and I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info (address, credit card etc) so that I wouldn't have to keep repeating it. I'd still have to trust that I get what I want, but the crucial <texting> an operator component is reduced to a fire and forget <call>. I'd use this if I was in the States.
My Credit Card company doesn't do text based concierge service. I would have to call them. The making a phone call is the bit I don't like. I haven't used the service so I have no idea what to expect with regards to storing details etc.
The landing page for Magic shows me exactly what I could expect, and it's based on SMS.
I've seen something similar before, very cool idea! My question is from an operational standpoint, who are the "operators"? Given the side-project nature of the site, are you up all night answering/ordering these things?
Loving the simplicity of it all. I just need to text a number. No app to install and grant access to my phone, no website to go and sign up to with my facebook account. Nothing.
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.
Yes, thanks for not requiring people to install software to use your service -- something that's already caused me to skip trying several services. I look forward to trying this one when it opens up to the public again!
I feel like THIS is why Magic is interesting. Everyone (assuming) has SMS capabilities on their phone. I've seen this be used for banking, but nothing had the personal element? The ease of use is such a plus for this kind of thing.
This could totally be automated, text recognition handles the easy cases where ordering can be done via the internet, the rest is handled by humans.
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.
I imagine if this thing sticks around, they'll eventually be able to automate simple things like the pizza ordering and whatnot. I imagine it could call back to a human in case of issues, such as:
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 first step is just to have backend software make a first pass at the texts and make suggestions to the rep. As it get better, it increases the throughput for the human rep. Like most automation, it becomes about making a human more productive, and that's a lot easier to accomplish.
There seems to be a pattern lately of services that are initially human based but then use that as validation for a human-supported AI model further down the road. https://x.ai/ is one of the recent ones I remember seeing.
Humans are still the most flexible source of labor you can use for a task, so it's possible to learn exactly what the requirements are using a human and then try to automate various repetitive parts of the task until the human hardly does anything but verify that the robots are working properly. Note that this does not mean that humans are the least expensive form of labor, although they are currently the only form of labor that can be created by two completely unskilled humans in about 9 months.
Looks like an even more minimal version of WunWun (https://www.wunwun.com/), which is a "write some unstructured text and we'll dispatch it" app, in NYC and SF. They hire and manage their own couriers tho.
I can already order pizza and flowers and plane tickets myself. However, if you could handle requests like:
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 can see this whole "magic" concept going places. :)
Yeah, if you can wrap shleps like this in a painless interface, it would be incredible.
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.
So you're saying that your coworker needs a real estate agent.
Is there a reason, besides money, that he isn't using one? I say "besides money", because you said you would pay "a lot of money" for it, so you can clearly afford an agent.
His reason is almost certainly money. An agent's commission isn't insignificant. It's the opportunity cost of, well... what he's doing.
If he's talking with contractors, he's probably also trying to figure out how to fix it up or modify it. I didn't need to talk with any contractors at all, so I don't know whether or not an agent would have helped.
If the seller is paying for "your" agent, is she really yours in the incentivized sense?
eg. Zuckerberg's college buddy who fronted the money for early FB servers was sure that "his" attorneys had his back, right up until they stabbed him, because they were paid by Zuckerberg.
It is an unbelievable pain (having just gone through the process myself) and unfortunately I don't think there's much you can do to delegate the pain, short of giving someone unlimited power of attorney. Even then, the worst part -- the day-to-day uncertainty -- won't go away.
A good buyer's agent can help to some extent, but the mortgage process is the real time sink. If you're a 1099 kind of person and you're not paying cash, your life will pretty much suck for a couple of months.
As I understand it, this is what TaskRabbit and several other services offer right now. If this is something that you do on a regular basis, you might have enough disposable income to hire a full time personal assistant. Or pool money with other well off friends and split an assistant's time.
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.
The other thing technology lets you do is specialize, which includes specialization in technologies of distribution, allocation, search, and fulfilment.
I'm curious how they are scaling on the financials side. I'm assuming they are paying for the things ordered off of their personal CC's and with the sudden spike in requests and the long delay of getting money back into their account, I wonder how far they will go.
A blog post after all of it cools down would be a fun read. :)
They aren't paying with the products they buy online with their customers CC though. That's what I was getting at. Since they don't have access to their customers CC on the websites they're purchasing these services/items from they are having to pay with it and then get reimbursed essentially with their "convenience fee" on top.
Realized what you meant and deleted and revised my comment. In any case, I can't imagine their personal credit cards handling any actual volume, not to mention the fraud protection issues with orders for deliveries all over the country.
This data goes to Stripe, where Magic bills you. Magic doesn't use your card info to order the services for you. This is why this idea won't work - it's going to get overrun with chargeback fraud and totally ruin it.
The users put a card on file with Stripe. Is there a way to use that info through Stripe to make a payment to the vendor? (and a separate charge to Magic for the service fee, maybe?)
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...
So I ordered a pizza last night(not through your service) and I had to call them after an hour because it didn't arrive and they misplaced the order. How would you handle such a situation?
We do exactly what you would do if you're being completely proactive...just behind the scenes so you don't have to worry about it. We call the pizza place, call the driver, deal with the annoyance. You just relax and wait for your pizza.
The customer knows if it arrived - do they need to notify you when it does? Or do all the services notify you? Otherwise, I don't see how you can tell if it's late and likely got misordered, and you need to contact the pizza place again.
Simplicity at its best. Quite stark and simple landing page. Simple service. Seems like no gimmicks. I would say I am looking forward to give it a try!
This reminds me of an opinion that I have which I've been looking for an opportunity to flesh out and share. Despite all of the research and engineering that's gone into the user interface (and "experience") of smartphones, text messaging as an interface has one massive advantage: the perceived cost of sending a text is miniscule in comparison to other operations. I don't have units, but it's probably an order of magnitude lower in any reasonable ones.
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.
"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."
Hmmm... I don't find using my phone for legitimate tasks tempts me to waste time with it in other ways. I find I only really "waste time" on my phone during the dead moments of a day or when I've set aside time to do things like read on the internet on my tablet at the end of the day. There's not a lot of draw towards using my phone when I shouldn't.
Yes, but with sms you're not easily sending your current location, for example. Here in China sms is being replaced by wechat, which can also be very fast, but has more power.
I project the opposite way, though I know I might be in the stark minority:
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.
557 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 339 ms ] threadWe 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!
There must be other services that let you text internationally, or pretend to have a US number.
Here's hoping you can scale up fast enough to outpace demand and give everyone a good first impression.
"Anything you want" makes it sound like people can use it like they'd use Siri.
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.
Is this sarcasm? I can't see how wrangling an order through an intermediary is easier than just ordering from the local pizzeria's website.
Not to mention that it takes a non-trivial time to confirm - in exogen's example above, it was 69 minutes plus delivery time. Small questions about relatively trivial things really drag out that confirmation time.
Often I'm just on my phone at night, no tablet/laptop. So say I want to get some food. I've got to go find the damn website. Remember a login maybe. Or deal with some JS-laden thing that doesn't render smoothly on my 6" Android. Sort all that shit out. Wonder if I have cash for a tip, cause I feel obligated most times.
Or calling. I gotta actually dial, talk to someone. Deal with all their questions if I want combos or the offer and I'll save $2 if I just say yeah, and what's my phone number and address again?
I realise I should get over this. That I'd do better in life (especially if I'm gonna sell my own software) if I got more comfortable just calling people and telling them what to do.
Meanwhile, I'm already imagining how awesome this is gonna be next time I'm in SF. I leave the office, start walking home. Text Magic and say "hey get me some X from Y". Get home and unpack my mind and someone comes and gives me food.
If it's an hour confirmation time, that's not as magic, but it's not a show-stopper. With less coordination than making the order myself, I can just pipeline things to work out.
Perhaps this reflects badly on me or is a commentary on society or laziness or I dunno. But I'm pretty fucking happy to imagine I can have someone else unlock the city for me if I'm not feeling up to it.
Here's how sick I am: I would order lunch via this every day, versus trying to get myself to go at the right time. Not too early because of the lines, but not too late because then they run out of good stuff or close. But I should probably get out a bit more so I won't use it every day just because of that. Otherwise I totally would. Hell, if they are streamlined enough, I'd even do it to order a cup of frozen yogurt (I'd probably pay $15-20 twice a week for delivery alone). I do prefer to get out and walk and take breaks, but sometimes it just doesn't work out, or it's too far, or whatever lameass excuse.
If there was a standard by which browsers stored payment and delivery details, a little beefed up from what we have now, would that get us part way? And then an endorsed way of interacting with an ordering system that can answer questions by default (no newsletter signup, no insurance, no warranty, default shipping, etc).
Loads of security issues, but we're going to have to solve this sort of thing eventually.
Isn't that basically the idea of PayPal or Amazon Payments and similar things?
If so, it has since become standards track: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#dom-form-r...
Alternatively, what if exogen wasn't willing to increase the order price by 50%? Back to the drawing board for another round at a different shop. It seems like a slow way to get food unless you're particularly laid back about pricing and what arrives, or you know exactly what's available at the shops you want to source from.
Of course, it'll depend on their execution. They're gonna have to keep a reputation of not totally ripping me off, like Amazon. With Amazon, I don't ever, ever, price compare. If I was gonna buy a 256 GB SSD and Amazon said it was $300, I'd go "well shit, I guess they went up" and that's that. If they keep abusing me, I'll figure it out, so keep the abuse low, and if I get pissed off, comp me and make me feel special.
There's no reason Magic needs to be slow and involve lots of back and forth so long they don't give me a reason to distrust them.
Edit: But you're right. If it's always slow, always back-n-forth, always weird pricing I need to check, then it wouldn't be great. So I'm just gonna hope they do a good job.
How did that go? Do they just find you a scalper and you pay the overcharge, or do they find you one at retail price on launch day?
Best concierge thing was going to a packed restaurant, told it'd take a long time without reservations, making a call and turning around to "right this way". No fee from Amex. They really wanna sell the flattery/status idea to get you spending more and feeling the $450/$5000 annual fees are worth it.
OTOH if you don't mind coming off as a dick, you can pull out a Centurion card and try to bully/bluff people with a "don't you know who I am" kinda deal. Though I did love the one time a friend tried this and the clerk just laughed and said "we don't take Amex". Also, other banks are issuing "Black" cards so there's a lot of people trying this not even being Amex holders.
Centurion used to come with more benefits, but they've been pulling them back and making it more of a show-off "I'm so elite" kind of thing. (A big blow was losing Continental elite status, since United is Chase's bitch.) They're building out airport lounges now to help compensate. And in Toronto Pearson, because Canada is just so incompetent, airlines don't have faster lines for security, just Air Canada and Amex. Rather annoying if you're a United 1K or otherwise paid for first class. That's probably the only reason I'd consider getting an Amex card again.
Nowadays, even random VISA cards will have concierge services, because it's fairly cheap, underused, yet makes people feel special. And for the cost of a Platinum card ($495 for primary, then $195 I think) you can use a lot of other services. And Centurion cards were $5000/$2500. I think you could just carry $5000 in cash and get the same kind of "respect".
(I haven't used Amex in years. Despite paying on time, always, and having a runrate of over $250K a year, they did a financial review, requesting my tax/employment records. I told them to fuck off and that was that.)
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.
But...then I concluded that surely it's ultimately cheaper and safer to just hire your own drug couriers. Given the slightest risk of discovery, they're less likely to reveal anything about the sender or to know the identity the recipient, unlike Magic.
So yeah, some people will always slip some shady stuff through every now and then. But I don't think Magic is the best solution to any of those illicit problems. No illegal arms dealer is sitting around thinking, "If only I had someone to deliver all these gun orders, I'd be rich!"
"We'll order what you need from the appropriate service (e.g. DoorDash, Instacart, Postmates, etc.), and deal with them"
All of these services handle the delivery when you order directly through them, so I don't think Magic is accepting a hand-off from them and then adding an extra leg to a trip. It sounds like Magic is just acting as a middle-man in these cases. I don't see anything on their site which suggests that they ever actually handle your stuff.
"Shit is just business, String. Buy for a dollar, sell for two. That’s all it need be."
Proposition Joe
I like fixing things.
But I don't know how to work on cars. So there's that...
Sometimes I don't know enough to diagnose a problem, though, and I take it to my buddy. He usually does the fix and I watch and help a little, but I don't know enough about the whole engine and how it all works together, at this point.
I want to buy a car to take apart and reassemble, but I don't currently have a space I can do that in. Though it just occurred to me I could get a storage unit, probably.
I have no idea how viable this is, but if you could find an effective way to extend this to "we will deal with your suppliers who only work by phone, and charge you for the privilege of not having to make the stupid call yourself" I would be very interested ... but probably useless as a customer, since I'm in the UK. It's just I already pay for fulfillment work and wish I could easily pay for utility company wrangling, and if somebody can validate the model hopefully somebody will do it over here eventually :)
Not sure if this is because of how quickly this blew up, but well done.
Make sure top phone # is tappable on mobile browsers.
Examples that don't make me question your ability to deliver - airline example seems to be hiding complexity (I question it as I read it), others really good
Payment pages should really be linked to an order ID of some sort, without which customers shouldn't be allowed to pay. Otherwise, lots of things can go wrong. Depending on how they have configured things on the server side, a customer could change the amount being paid and the system would consider the ticket paid, cheating them out of money. Or a customer could follow an old link and wind up paying twice if they thought it didn't go through the first time.
I'm not joking, click on it and try to pay. It shows an invoice of ($5,000), a.k.a. $5000 negative dollars. I didn't enter real payment information to see what happens next because of really idiotic interpretations of what constitutes "hacking", but it is a really bad design choice on their part that took me about half a second to find.
Founder, if you're reading this: was this an in-house build or did you outsource this?
The PH comments:
http://www.producthunt.com/posts/magicAnd then...boom.
In other words I'd be interested to find anything on the quality of its traffic.
We launched one of those landing-only email-catching product pitches on Product Hunt and Designer News. It went amazing. We never even topped #1, yet we got lots of useful feedback and more than five hundred emails of potential customers, some of them high-profile (think @google.com or @abc.com)
Are you a human being talking about other human beings, or a "market opportunity" about-talking "quality traffic" that "converts very well?" I should write a "quality traffic" bot with "good conversions," then post it on Product Hunt.
I suspect just like the concierge at a hotel, the cut comes from the provider of the service (a dozen roses for 100 bucks - they can afford some affiliate fees from that)
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!!! ;-)
Just what they can do for me right now. Hat's off. Good luck.
... 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?
Annoying glitz too if they include information in the videos that isn't in text form on their website. Videos play at one speed, I can't fast forward the video if I'm a faster "video-watcher" like I can with reading. And if I'm on a VPN I'd rather avoid loading the video altogether if I can avoid it, which is what my browser plugins are for.
Well, perhaps I could just watch the videos faster, interesting thought experiment.
If I'm legitimately interested in a service and want to know how it works, sure, but if I just want a quick overview to decide if I'm interested I'd rather have something simple like some text and images.
I don't mind videos but I hate those non informative mood videos.
This site doesnt need video because the information is already there.
(I very rarely watch videos and much prefer screenshots or descriptions.)
However, when I've decided to actually try it out, I find the video extremely useful as I expect it to demonstrate the onboarding process for me (ie how do I get started quickly).
It's extremely rare for me to indulge a linear narrative when I'm looking for information.
Case in point, technical support/call center and room where you're constantly 'monitored'(NASA control room/datacenter NOC etc).
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.
Or a combination of any of above.
As for pricing, perhaps a flat rate per request ($1?) that comes with up to 5 minutes of operator time for free. Then any time past 5 minutes could be billed in 5-minute blocks, perhaps $2 each (base price) and tiered up by order price (I dunno, maybe $3 for $500+, $5 for $2500+, $8 for $15000+). Also, you could charge predefined flat rates for any aspects of the order that can be automated.
Again, the important thing is that you're clear about what you're charging and why.
Great idea!
EDIT: changed suggested prices (redid math)
> 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 want X." "That'll be 22.50 with delivery." "Ok."
If the price is fair to you, buy it. View this as another store which happens to have everything. Under the hood they run out and subcontract.
I like the one cost quote. Perfect. Things are worth what people will pay for them.
They quote, you either find it's worth it, or not, no worries.
Seems to me, there will be people who value their time low, who will not want to pay so much, and others who will value their time highly and will pay.
Scaling off the latter crowd might be easier to do and capitalize on.
I don't agree, but a scary indictment if it were true.
Clever business name though.
Judging by the examples on your site, you've succeeded in bringing concierge service to (sorry) the masses, by pricing it much lower than competing offerings.
Congratulations! You have a highly viable MVP. Good luck scaling it out!
This service is based on SMS though, and I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info (address, credit card etc) so that I wouldn't have to keep repeating it. I'd still have to trust that I get what I want, but the crucial speaking to an operator component is reduced to a fire and forget SMS. I'd use this if I was in the States.
> My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I'd have to find the number (or put it in my phone..), then <text> an operator, and then trust that they could deliver on what I expect.
> This service is based on <calls> though, and I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info (address, credit card etc) so that I wouldn't have to keep repeating it. I'd still have to trust that I get what I want, but the crucial <texting> an operator component is reduced to a fire and forget <call>. I'd use this if I was in the States.
The landing page for Magic shows me exactly what I could expect, and it's based on SMS.
What's not to follow?
- having to find the number (or put in in your phone), and
- trust that they could deliver on what I expect
- I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info
Yet those three things are identical whether you use magic or your CC concierge service!
So you might as well have just written
> My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I don't like talking on the phone, but I don't mind SMS.
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.
I'll bet they don't invent antigravity devices though! :-)
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.
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.
Boom! there goes every single bit of something resembling "privacy" you had. Magic.
https://www.crunchbase.com/location/moffett-field/d32799a0b6...
http://m.jobs.monster.com/l-moffett-field,-ca.aspx
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/topic/moffett-field/
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.
Is there a reason, besides money, that he isn't using one? I say "besides money", because you said you would pay "a lot of money" for it, so you can clearly afford an agent.
If he's talking with contractors, he's probably also trying to figure out how to fix it up or modify it. I didn't need to talk with any contractors at all, so I don't know whether or not an agent would have helped.
eg. Zuckerberg's college buddy who fronted the money for early FB servers was sure that "his" attorneys had his back, right up until they stabbed him, because they were paid by Zuckerberg.
A good buyer's agent can help to some extent, but the mortgage process is the real time sink. If you're a 1099 kind of person and you're not paying cash, your life will pretty much suck for a couple of months.
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.
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."
Etc? Really?
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 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.
"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?
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.
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.