I'm a very active user of Magic+, so I'll give my perspective. (and of course I've been working with them from the beginning at YC, so you're also free to discard my opinion as biased)
For me, Magic+ is basically the impossibly good personal assistant, kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man, or Emily in The Devil Wears Prada. Unlike a conventional assistant, it's available 24/7, always happy to take on more work, and capable of accomplishing just about anything.
Obviously the $100/hr price point puts it out of reach for most people, but my expectation (as an investor) is that as the tech improves, they will be able to bring down the price while maintaining or even improving the quality of the service (I call this the Tesla strategy).
For me however, $100/hr is totally worth it since it effectively increases my leverage and enables me to get more done in less time. I've used it to plan events for YC founders, answer questions that are hard to Google (they will find the right experts and ask them), and provide unique and memorable gifts to friends, family, and business partners. I'm used to paying a high price for quality professional services such as accountants or lawyers, so $100/hr for the best possible assistant feels completely reasonable and rational.
Call me skeptical, but where exactly is the tech involved? Currently this is just text messages going to people + people doing the things.
One possibility would be through AI (a bit of a weasel word most of the time, honestly), but Google and Apple are both miles ahead on NLP, so by the time you can parse "get me a peperonni pizza", Google will have been doing it for free for the past year , and include a 10% off coupon for the pizza!
Considering your value is based almost entirely on getting things done through an assistant that understands English, it looks like costs are basically how much you pay the assistant themselves... Maybe you can get away with paying them $20/hour (and equipping them with good tools to do the common stuff fast).
The Tesla strategy works (well, in theory) because so much of the cost of the good is based in things that are continuously getting cheaper (batteries).
But here... What's driving down the cost of the assistants? Seems like the solutions are much more about HR-style "innovations" , business partnerships, and the like than anything coming out of MIT.
I sincerely hope the strategy isn't "find the cheapest human labor possible"
Since a high percentage of services will likely end in a transaction, there's a huge opportunity to become the Amazon-scale retailer of services. I find I don't even google products I want to buy anymore, I just immediately search Amazon. Amazon is my retail UI. If Magic can do the same thing in this space—become the service UI—I'd imagine it won't be long before more revenue comes form partnerships than directly from consumers.
Need an on demand helicopter in NYC? Great, Magic knows just who to call for that because they already did it for Justin Kan. Need to rent the Exploratorium? Great, they can do that too.
For more common requests that fit neatly into other on-demand services offering, they could ostensibly partner directly with those folks and integrate with them. That way, Magic could have their own master dashboard to purchase services with minimal effort.
Excuse me if this is a bit naive, but I've always had the impression the whole point of Magic is to build the AI side. Maybe not communicating back to the user... perhaps that part's always done by a human, but a human with machine-aided decision making. I would love to see the internal interface that Magic's personal assistants are using today.
Doing every task by hand with people probably doesn't scale. Maybe for $100/hr it does, but that could just be their way of targeting tasks for executives because they have a higher percentage of profit. I expect they're using the data from requests today as training to recognize narrow patterns to be automated tomorrow.
Edit: I found this in their FAQ.
> Q: Do you use AI to fulfill my requests?
> Magic+ is fulfilled through a combination of top-tier executive assistants and concierges, paired with intelligent software. Our unique combination of humans and software is what enables us to consistently deliver an unparalleled level of service.
They don't need to compete with Google or Apple on the front of AI as a polished product. Not now, anyways. All they need to do is make something that works. They can get away with building something that wouldn't even be beta-worthy for big tech companies to release. To Magic, AI could simply mean more efficient infrastructure, keeping human interaction in place of UX.
The more efficient they get, the more they can lower the price. The more they can lower the price, the more users they'll have. The more users, the more revenue, the more cash to spend on improvement.
AI doesn't have to roll out of MIT looking like Jarvis just to be useful.
Google, Facebook, many other companies (perhaps not Apple) publish many of their research findings and a lot of innovation is coming straight from academia.
To answer your question more directly, the hardware, software and data required to run an effective machine learning platform is getting cheaper and more powerful every year, which should drive down price if they can replace human tasks with AI solutions.
As evil as it seems, that's probably a sane strategy - as actual automation eats the job market, the number of unemployed, or those seeking multiple/alternate employment, will rise. These will more and more comprise displaced white collar workers. This will make the employment market a buyers market (moreso than it is already) and will result in decreased labour costs.
So - call me cynical, but if that's their plan, it's robust - if potentially evil - at least it'll be providing employment.
Right now Magic is targeting price insensitive users, which provides an ENORMOUS advantage because they can always pick the most expensive options when executing a request. They basically remove one of the variables regular people have to optimize for, and it makes it much easier to make users happy.
If they're dropping the price to where price-sensitive users get involved, they're going to have to make far more complicated decisions about what flowers at what price point make someone happy, or what seat on what airline makes sense.
>User: Can you get me an Ipad pro tonight? >M+: Sure. I'm assuming you want the best model - 128GB with LTE in Space gray? >U: Yeah
This process of comparing available options against prices, data plans, and features would have taken at least half an hour for me. Right now, they can just disregard the price completely and offer whatever is the easiest to do/get/access.
I can absolutely admit that when Magic first launched, we were over capacity and a certain percentage of orders went awry. I hate that this happened, but we really did not predict that the website would go viral so quickly. In fact, today, we still have such high demand for the service that there is a long waitlist for the regular service, and our $100/hr service is getting a lot of signups very quickly as well.
This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to make sure that people who had a very high bar for service quality would be able to use the service right away and be guaranteed to have the absolute highest level of service, no matter what.
I completely understand that given your past experience with Magic, you might not want to try Magic+. However, I can confidently say that if you try it, you will find that it feels very different from the Magic that you tried. Your keg will be there.
Say you have a huge job, or many small jobs, that one personal assistant couldn't do at once alone. Or if you don't have enough jobs at all times of the day to keep your personal assistant busy. etc..
Its kindof analogous to renting time on a server farm vs owning a pc.
What tech?
Tesla's strategy is working because they are using the high prices of their luxury cars to pay for serious technological innovation and build infrastructure for economies of scale on the expensive components (batteries).
Without knowing what type of technology (beyond SMS) powers Magic/Magic+, and why it can't be easily replicated by competitors, it's difficult to buy into your optimism.
People tend to give their business to people they trust (or to people recommended by people they trust).
Just like I think I'd be wary to contract a faceless lawyer to handle my next divorce, I think I'd be wary to contract a faceless personal assistant to handle any important aspects of my personal or business life unless I'm really desperate.
So if my rationale were applicable to many others, Magic+ main challenge would be solving how they can overcome the trust roadblock.
Also, because you can afford it.
If you only need assistance a few hours a month, I can understand the need for such a service, but why not just hire a virtual assistant that speaks perfect English, and works 40 hours a week for around $2000 a month (or less!). Multiple companies, including Zylun.com offer access to such talent.
$100/hr for competent assistants 24/7/anywhere is a steal for any kind of organization like investment banks, enterprise sales, consulting firms, that send their people into the field to do high pressure, deadline-driven work.
The first two times, I said "hey I want a sandwich with [x]" and I got it but it took a lot longer than if I just clicked the necessary buttons on Seamless. Then I kept getting random calls from time to time from pizza delivery men saying they were downstairs.
They were very apologetic and nice about it, but really it just wasn't worth it for me. The CTO (I think) reached out to me some months later asking why I stopped and well it's the same answer: very little utility for someone like myself. If I were rich, hey sure why not boss someone around for random things (though I don't know why I wouldn't just hire someone I can trust). However, if you're middle income or even a little higher, what's the point really? Everything else is basically on-demand in this new uber-fied world.
The first time around, I asked for flowers, and got a picture of some flowers that they could send to my recipient. I didn't like the flowers in the picture, and so they picked another set of flowers per some feedback from me. The flowers arrived, and the recipient was touched, but my lingering feeling was that I would have spent the same amount of time ordering online, and it would have been easier to find the right kind of flowers if I had done so.
The second time I tried to order flowers was a complete disaster. I was ordering them for a special occasion, and Magic had told me they would be delivered within an acceptable time frame. However, the flowers never showed up. I was not notified that they had not showed up - instead I learned that they had not showed up after one of the more embarasing birthday calls of my life. Magic was very nice about it, refunded me and delivered the flowers late for free. The error may not even have been their fault. However, the extra layer of abstraction between me and the flower delivery person in this case seemed to make the whole situation worse.
I use a lot of different do-things-for-you services these days. In theory Magic is a service I should be totally hooked on, but these bad experiences killed it for me. What's the point of a service that does everything for you if it makes things more complicated or harder to get done?
That is the deal right? Pay us and we take care of it.
Not Pay us and make sure it gets done yourself.
- We really feel terrible that some early Magic users had a less-than-magical experience after our initial, spontaneous launch. I'm really sorry about that. I'm glad that you got your refund. If you're interested, reach out to us and we can probably track down exactly what happened and what broke down in the chain of operations.
- This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to be able to hold a very high bar for top-tier service and guarantee that you would have it at all times, no matter what.
- We'd love for you to give Magic+ a try and compare it to your experiences with Magic. I'm highly confident that you will feel a major difference, however I understand if you don't feel inclined to do so after your past experience.
Some of the themes you're bringing up here actually point to why we created Magic+ in the first place. Magic+ was developed as a response to the needs of the most active and demanding users of our standard Magic service. In particular, a common demand was to hold a very high bar for quality and seamlessness of experience.
Right now, some of these user-requested experiences are more expensive to deliver than the original Magic pricing model accounted for. Our plan is to offer Magic+ at this price now, because there is good demand for it at this price, and drop the price over time to reach a larger and larger market. $100 dollars an hour is a lot, but our most active users tell us that for this level of elite service, it's a bargain.
Q: Where is Magic+ available?
Anywhere you need it. Magic+ is there to make your every desire and need happen, wherever you are.
# Does this mean that we can actually use it in other countries like the UK? Do we need to use an area code?
For free.
Judging by the price and the copy in the page, I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually targeted at rich people.
But seriously, this thread is absurd. I truly do not understand how a significant portion of this site (even knowing that it is probably largely made up of affluent, educated people) consider this to be even a reasonable value proposition. I'm not incredibly affluent or anything, but by any standard short of the true "1%" I am extremely well off. However the level of wealth required that a blind commitment of $100/hr for trivial delagatable tasks is way beyond anything I would consider using, especially considering the significant upfront purchase that seems to be required. What ten hours of random bullshit that I not just need done, but would entrust to a stranger without known qualifications is worth $1k? Not much...
But this comment section is filled with well crafted top level praise of the service with a staggering amount of popularity for what seems to be an extreme luxury service. Compounded by very "reasonable" objections with immediate and solicitous responses by accounts claiming to be representatives humbly begging for an opportunity to right their wrongs and improve the service.
This whole thing looks like a finely tuned campaign to leverage highly-regarded social media in a wide scale blitz to make the absurd product seem reasonable. Seriously, I'm staggered at this comment section and the popularity here.
And this "target market" excuse seems like crap. If the "target market" is extremely rich folk who would consider dropping $100/hr on miscellaneous unskilled labor with almost no real guarantee of reliability or quality, then they wouldn't be blitzing a random social media site to improve their image (which they explicitly are doing with mr. cmikec running around). They'd focus their efforts on true premium clients and demonstrate some sort of solid guarantee of their reliability that a suspicious rich person might actually accept. This whole thing looks like an attempt to make random $100/hr requests somehow seem reasonable to people who can technically afford it but typically wouldn't even consider it if they didn't see it as a "normalish" thing to do.
People are much too quick to jump to a "shilling" explanation when other people's interests differ from their own. We need a name for this bias.
That's the salary of a full-time assistant who would be on call only 8-12 hours a day.
If you are the kind of guy who is rich enough for a personal assistant, I'm pretty sure $100/hour isn't unreasonable
And not just that, but only extremely rich people have truly personal assistants, and if they can afford them then they probably don't need this apparently mass-marketed service. Most "personal assistants" are hired by a company that the said "rich person" is involved with, making it a company expense. And why would a company with the resources to hire a personal assistant (and likely other flexible personnel) go to some $100/hr service when they have their own employees to service their general needs and who can be responsible for tracking down and hiring the specialists who actually do those tasks.
I mean, seriously. You could hire a full-time minion to go out and find and pay specialist deliverers, caterers, etc. for a similar or smaller cost than it takes to hire someone unknown and unreliable to do it ad hoc for a quarter of that time, given that 40hr/month estimate.
I participate in competitive events (video games and card games) where I generally only have 10-15 minute gaps to leave throughout a 15 hour day in a foreign city. I would happily spend $20 to have somebody find the best available food which can be delivered to me and order that food. I wouldn't ever want to pay for an assistant, since I only would need this service 2-3 times per month.
And that is the exact market for Magic+ - people who would happily pay for a personal assistant at that rate, but don't have enough work to benefit from hiring a real assistant. I've spoken to friends seriously about hiring an assistant which would split their time to help 8-10 of us, with us equally splitting their salary. This is a more elegant solution to that.
I agree with OP- this is an absurd tool. If you can pay $100/hr for an anonymous 'personal assistant' you can pay for a real personal assistant. This is another example where rich SV-elite are making out of touch predictions on the market.
When you live in SV and make your 125k+ salary you're going to come up with a lot of pretty damn good useful things for yourself -- but not everybody else.
I am from an immigrant family and parents combined income was ~75k for my entire life (in Canada, no less, where we pay much more for the same products as our neighbors down south). You can reduce the cost of access or improve the experience but at the end of the day we simply didn't have the disposable income to even make use of Amazon in any kind of life changing way. It just wasn't that big of a deal until I started making the kind of money that the benefits of Amazon became obvious.
Most of SV hype is around products that simply don't apply to MOST people. This is also why you REALLY notice when someone strikes to the core of universal affordable (if not totally free) services - Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Uber etc. The big successes (in the consumer space) are ones that have the blanket appeal across income ranges.
For now, Magic+ is not one of these.
I kind of just wrote straight through and realized I didn't make any solid 'points' but hopefully something resonates. The basic idea is that most things being done by SV are STILL things that most people CANNOT afford.
A statement about Hacker News that could just as easily be made about the world in general doesn't carry any information about HN. Many (perhaps most) of the claims I read about HN fall in this bucket.
> If you can pay $100/hr for an anonymous 'personal assistant' you can pay for a real personal assistant.
Isn't this a matter of batch sizes? I might pay $100 for the occasional hour but couldn't hire a full-time personal assistant. I wouldn't hire a full-time accountant or dentist either.
There's something odd here. This smells wrong.
I'm fortunate enough to have a real personal assistant. She's amazing, she knows me, she does fantastic work, and I pay her a fair and reasonable wage (including health care) that's far less than $100/hour. So let's put me in the category of "people who can afford a personal assistant" but not quite in the category of "people who demand to meet Tina Fey & Amy Poehler on demand."
I would NEVER in a million years consider replacing my assistant with a faceless nameless AI-assisted service. I have a number of friends who are also fortunate enough to have assistants. They would NEVER consider replacing their assistants with a faceless nameless AI-assisted service (at least one friend has an assistant that's been with him for years and is basically part of the family).
And with the examples they give, Magic+ is painting a picture of both a service and user that's highly specific -- wealthy enough to afford these luxuries, but not willing to make the investment of hiring a real person to build a real relationship with to perform these tasks.
So the whole thing feels....dismissive. I guess that's the best word I can come up with. Dismissive of money ("Entertain me with Tina Fey - I will pay for her presence."), dismissive of human contact ("I don't want a real assistant - I just want to text a service to do my bidding.") Dismissive of warmth. It's sort of what I imagine a caricature of a dystopian tech billionaire would want -- all of the somethings with none of the someones.
I dunno. It just feels ... off. Sorry I can't come up with something better. But as the target demographic (I think?), I'm feeling like the pitch is very off-target and off-putting.
1. Your sysadmin 2. Your secretary 3. Your head of security
These are people you have to have to trust. And they must be loyal and you must be loyal to them.
Welcome to the future. This is what happens when you have a highly concentrated, morally bankrupt nouveau-riche out-of-touch with greater society drives "innovation". It's only going to get worse as the bubble continues.
I would however pay for an outcome based solution to this as it's a pain to call Comcast every year. Renegotiate to $X for Y and I'll pay.
The Bloomberg article you may have read: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-10/billfixers...
Some co-workers have raved about https://www.fancyhands.com/ for this kind of stuff, not sure if that's any different from Magic, though.
There are examples of Magic+ requests, but no real-world examples of outcomes and whether the request was filled successfully to the customer's satisfaction.
Relatedly, the $100/hr is suspicious because it's impossible to audit the time spent by the assistant. (Contrast with flat fees stated upfront from the normal service.)
For our $100/hr Magic+ product, we display detailed reports daily to users that show exactly how time was used down to the second. I agree that communicating this correctly is key. If you're interested in trying it, I'd love to hear your feedback on how we display this information.
Also, invariably with a complex task, there's going to be a lot of dead time spent waiting while coordinating.
> Never says no
> Hits 100% of promises and expectations
To pick one of their examples:
"I need to rent out the Exploratorium this weekend."
What if someone already rented it out? Or it's under construction? Or there's a special event? Or *?
If I was willing to foot the bill, you could probably do any of the example magics listed (assuming you had my details/logins to email/calendar) in an hour or two.
2) Do the Magicians post a surety bond to Magic for liability-related losses? Does Magic have third party fidelity bonds to help defend against suits brought against them due to fraudulent actions by (I assume) contractor Magicians? Disclaiming all liability and hold harmless agreements can be problematic in reality, given the example market of impulse iPad Pro buyers could easily be envisioned to have enough resources to litigate Magic into oblivion.
3) Do Magicians undergo any kind of background checking?
If I'm going to trust a service with information otherwise protected by regularly rotated credentials and TFA - and I'm not beyond doing that, since the pricing for dependable and trustworthy (and bonded/insured) assistants for ad-hoc tasks doesn't seem too offensive to me - I'd want to know my risks.
I know that doesn't make for magical copy on a landing page, but it's a selling point. I used the original Magic pretty early on, getting a rather esoteric accessory for some discontinued on-ear studio monitors, and I was impressed by their professionalism. If the pricing goes to the next level, the professionalism needs to follow, in my opinion.
If you value your time more than your money, then they're an excellent service that gives you a new suite of capabilities for making that tradeoff. They have been able to arrange everything I've asked them to do. What I like about them is that I can make a request without having any idea how to go about getting it fulfilled, and Magic will figure out how - they'll do the research and find a solution. They are familiar with service providers for all sorts of unusual tasks and will set them up for you: personal chefs, car servicing pickup, garbage pickup - for everything I've asked they've had an answer.
They are primarily limited however by their staff on the ground or lack thereof. Although they've been able to organize couriers in several cities to accomplish tasks, they have occasionally been unable to find couriers on the day of a request. Magic is a generalist service: they can do virtually anything, but not necessarily within the same hour you ask. They're worse than specialist services like Postmates at tasks like basic food pickup and delivery (mostly due to lower availability of couriers). Magic is most useful when your need is unusual and a typical service won't be able to get it done - or when you want a complex problem to be solved and don't want to have to think about or manage the solution. At such a task, they excel, and they've always come through for me in the end.
The Magic staff are very friendly and personable, as well. Their customer service is a tier above any other company I've interacted with. They handle requests with unusually high intellectual and emotional intelligence, and care. (Disclaimer: I haven't used Magic+, only the original Magic which has been surprisingly cheap for the value it adds.)
Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is making me seriously think about what Magic's target market is. What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? I know people who I would consider "wealthy" on a first-world scale but this seems like a service suited for millionaires only (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course).
What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner? Probably not $1k a month. It's a stretch at $2k but not impossible. It does not feel "absurdly not socially normative" at $3k -- I did it when I was a young twenty-something.
To the extent that there is a real class-based difference here, it may be "degree of comfort with the notion that 'there is probably a way to spend money to achieve this without needing to do anything else.'" It's like, I don't know, a bureaucratic process which requires someone to go down to City Hall and stand in line for half a day. The middle class is capable of buying their way around that but it doesn't generally occur to them to try; the upper class don't even hear that that was a requirement because the very expensive person they use to handle legal issues already subcontracted it out.
It ends up being something a few times more expensive as a night out at the restaurant, so it's not cheap, and you don't get the ambiance, but my wife is very attached to memories, so the touch of "somewhere we visited on a romantic trip" is quite nice, and more appreciated than e.g. jewelry that might be as or more expensive.
This being the case, all Magic is really doing here is helping you find out which restaurants will ship, and perhaps making some phone calls to arrange shipments that aren't advertised.
Depends heavily on how often they did it. A quick estimate suggests that a request like that would cost a few hundred dollars at most: the cost of the food itself, packing it in an insulated box with cold packs (some restaurants can do that themselves, and if not, a shipping service could most likely do that quite cheaply), and about $100 to ship a package weighing a few pounds overnight. Absolutely in the "luxury" category, but a few hundred dollars doesn't seem wildly outlandish for someone making an average tech salary to choose to spend on a meaningful birthday gift for a close friend.
(I say "meaningful" because I'd tend to assume that the reason for the restaurant across the country would involve some kind of shared memory with the place, rather than just a wild whim.)
Once I used it to order fried chicken from a deli that isn't available via any delivery service. That was nice.
The coolest thing by far was using it to buy a gift. I follow an embroidery artist on Instagram, and noticed she was doing a pop-up shop in Chicago (I live in Seattle). I directly inquired about commissioning pieces or buying her existing pieces, but it just wasn't possible – this pop-up shop was the only way. I showed Magic a few of the pieces I liked best on Instagram, gave them a price limit (no idea even how much they were selling for), and described how there were only a few of these things available and they'd probably be gone fast. They sent someone there and managed to get one for me and mail it!
You can smell the elitism dripping in their examples on the site. Private helicoptors, $31 grocery delivery... most people will pay a little extra for convenience, but this is ridiculous.
Magic feels more like Uber to me. You don't use Uber once, then establish personal contact with that one driver, never using Uber again. The value of Uber is that you can get a driver on-demand, at any time, wherever you are; this is not possible if you just have one driver's cell phone number. Similarly, asking Magic to send some flowers to your girlfriend doesn't mean that you'll never have a use for Magic again. It's a middle man that can provide value repeatedly.
Magic's generality is why it might actually stand a chance. For instance, you could probably use it as a makeshift Homejoy, asking for them to find you a cleaner who will come to your place once every two weeks. Once they find you a cleaner, you won't need them for that particular service again, as you'll have personal contact with the cleaner. But because of their generality you'll be able to find many other uses for Magic most likely.
With Homejoy, you could avoid the middle-man and go straight to the person doing the work. Here, you don't meet the person doing the work and the middle-man is where your time is saved.
1. A lot of frustration from customers and a lot of churn. An effective personal assistant, or office manager, or whatever, effectively begins to read the mind of their employer. Lack of face-to-face, and what I imagine will be a lot of assistant churn, will result in very poor "mind reading" abilities. Cost of training a new assistant is much higher than actually having one, at least for folks who utilize their services a lot.
2. A race to the bottom on price, exacerbating the problem of assistant churn. $100/hr leaves a lot of room at the bottom, but it'll drop to the point where people in the US aren't willing to do the job of magic assistant.
3. $0 is the cost of Siri, Google Now, and Alexa. They truly suck right now, for almost everything except taking the place of a keyboard, but will get better. There's a limit to what "virtual" assistants can do for you; at some point you need a meat robot to go physically do stuff for you, if you want assistance beyond what technology can do.
Not to trash talk the idea or the company, at all. I haven't tried it. I can't think of anything it could do for me that I wouldn't rather hire an actual assistant for. At $100, you can get several hours of real human time, in your local market. Someone you can meet, and develop a rapport with. I'm ordinarily not on the side of the fence that insists that the personal touch is important (I don't like car dealers and want them to disappear, I don't like sales people at any store and generally want them to disappear, etc. because in general, they know less than me about what I'm shopping for and just serve to annoy me and occasionally lie to me to try to manipulate my decision). But, in this case, there is real value in a real live human having access to your daily life or work so they can be most productive about helping you get shit done.
Then a middle man skims most of the profits while all of the personal assistants of the world lose job stability and end up having to work 80 hours a week as "personal contractors" to try and break even with what they previously made in a 40 hour work week.
Yeah; I'm a bit skeptical.
They're going way over the top here to market it to busy douchebags. I thought about using it until I saw who they think I might be.
I think some of the incredulity is that there's... an authenticity skepticism as to how much these represent average requests (and therefore responses). But like you said -- if you don't have a marketing problem, who cares what the HN peanut gallery says. ;)
You don't pay people $100 an hour for commodity work. Unless you're so rich that price doesn't matter, I guess.
Which is a good idea, in theory. But we've yet to see to see the strategy will work. They aren't building a cheap electric car yet.
Magic+ is actually not just one person, but it's a software-driven service with a highly trained team of professional assistants that are held to a very high bar. They are managed, supervised, and trained by us so that you don't have to worry about it.
And, on top of that, every task and request is managed from beginning to end using custom software that is designed specifically to monitor the execution strategy and enhance both the quality and the reliability of the output. It's difficult for me to say more right now about how this works without disclosing IP that we cannot disclose at this time, but I hope to be able to say more about how this works in the future.
A good way to think about Magic+ is that it's a natural-language command-line interface for complex tasks that require some human interaction. A component of how we handle your email is more like a ~/.procmailrc file that can pipe things to a highly-supervised human assistant than it is like having a random person somewhere in the US logged in to your Gmail. You tell us how you need things done, using natural language, and it gets done, assuming it's possible.
Again, I recognize that this explanation is not as detailed as it could be, but I hope that it helps. I will think about how we can explain this better before we are able to disclose the inner-workings of our software.
People aren't mentioning this here, but the real sticker shock is not $100 / hour but rather that to get that price you have to be ready to pay $1000 now or sign up for a $3000 a month subscription (that also begins now)
The low-key information page doesn't really set you up for that level of commitment to check things out.
Are they proposing we should be ok with giving them our credentials?
Text this number to get a regular human assistant for $50/hr: xxxxx
Using Magic-, you have a regular power - highly trained Magicians can ask regular people for help with minor tasks. Send our very normal people a text message 24/7, and you can get help doing your very magical things.
I'm currently living abroad and don't speak the language very well. So I hired a virtual assistant who speaks the language and English. He charges $7.50 USD an hour. I only pay him for time it takes to complete my tasks. I rarely even pay $100 for the whole month.
This is like people getting mad at Heroku or Github when some commodity host costs a tenth the price. Thankfully you have a choice and no-one is forcing you to use it.
For things you can realistically text to have done, the task has be crystal clear, and basically atomic. If I've already done the work of making it crystal clear and atomic, then it's not worth $100/hr anymore, because it's just rote busy work at that point.
I'm in a wheelchair and access to a personal assistant (especially for travel arrangements) would be excellent.
Access to a personal assistant in the departure country and the arrival location (to check just how wheelchair accessible that Days Inn wheelchair-accessible suite really is) would be phenomenal.
There's a business idea there, just that the market is small and difficult to cater for (lots and lots of different needs)
I'm one of the lucky ones and I'm relatively well off, but 100/hour (~$140AUD/hour) is way, way out of my price range.
>We may share your personal information with:
>Third-party vendors and other service providers that perform services on our behalf, as needed to carry out their work for us, which may include identifying and serving targeted advertisements(...)
>Other companies whose products or services may be of interest to you
...
That sounds pretty bad even if it wasn't so vague. This is a bloody premium service...
For example, if you ask them to get your Macbook fixed, and put a reminder in your calendar for when it's ready, that may result in you being served Apple ads.
How about a service that answers texts like, "where can I find a warm place to stay tonight?" or "please get the welfare department to correct their mistake and reactivate my food stamps."
How is this possible? If it were true then anyone wanting a reservation at "places that nobody else can" would go through Magic+, and then what? There are more rich people than available seats at hot restaurants...?
The "I'll do anything for you by SMS" space (I call it the "Houdini app" space) space affords the middle-to-upper class in first world countries (where labor is much more expensive) the same power you'd get if you were in a country where labor is much cheaper.
Example: in Lebanon, where I grew up, the middle-to-upper class of the population has: a stay-at-home maid ($200/mo), a driver ($300/mo), and a concierge at the bottom of their building ($30/mo), who will take care of pretty much anything for you. This is possible because labor is so cheap. I'd say you have to be in the 0.1% in the US to be able to afford this (since labor would cost you much more), but in third world countries, it's within reach of probably the top 15% of the population (by income).
I think the most successful concierges have a "fixer" mindset - you give them a very loosely defined need, and their job is 1) coordinating and finding a solution, and 2) actually following through and executing on it. The fixer's advantage is 1) the end user trusts them, trusts their taste, and there is a pre-existing relationship with the customer, and 2) the user has a general idea of what they can and cannot do.
The real value Magic brings is that they can be the fixer for your day-to-day life. If I were Magic, I'd change the pricing to $200/hour, but only charged if the task is actually completed. That way, the incentives really line up in that 1) they're more incentivized to complete the task successfully, 2) users trust them a lot more and know that they will get their money's worth, and 3) they develop the "fixer" brand, where Magic gets you what you want, and you only have to pay if it gets done.
Lots of important technologies start off as "toys for the rich" - I could see that happening here too. What I am curious to see, is how they plan on bringing the cost of the service down. Or if it's possible to get a big enough market share at this price point.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351
[2] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/my-disruptive-d...
good thoughts..would be great to get these services on the cheap out here. Lyft of grape leaves rolling? ha.
"Personally email all my 1,200 new customers today, get me feedback in 2 hours."
"Make sure this story hits top page on Reddit/HN."
These are probably weird examples. But the expectation here would be to get a superhuman, who does task a random human simply cannot do. Group work is what I expect I'm paying for. Otherwise, I can hire a freelancer online for $1000 a month.
They haven't responded yet.
The most valuable thing about having good EA is the relationship e.g. you often don't need to ask them to do things as they know you well enough to preempt the requests, they take initiative, which is always going to be lacking in a service like Magic+.
With their promise of "Anything you want. Seriously." how long before we see that? :)
I definitely recommend the basic version!
[ No problem. ]"Finish my dissertation. Thanks."
There are lots of academic ghostwriting services. While not ethical, I assume they are totally legal. It would be relatively easy to hire one of them.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/11/ed-dante/the-shadow-scho...
Will it cure cancer for you? No. But if it can get you the best care available, that seems like a reasonable response.
their roll out of this pivot has been a disaster:
1) Last week the homepage was saying it was free: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6v7ctgeakcya1wi/1.png?dl=0 but when you signed up it asked you to pay $100/hr or $3000 a month
2) Then yesterday they updated the homepage to say it was a paid ONLY service: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t01zei3j9k6e99f/2.png?dl=0
3) Now today they've updated the homepage wording to say it's free OR paid: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5qlrt6vfzsigda0/3.png?dl=0
Venturebeat did a post on the pivot: http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/04/magic-to-start-charging-10...
Also, pretty sure a service like this doesn't give a shit what the website says. If you are reading the website, it's either not for you or you have an interest in tech news and the exact pricing structure doesn't matter to you anyway.
Pretty sure this service doesn't need to advertise.
I presume you're aware that text messages are easy to fake. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_spoofing) What controls do you have in place to prevent fraud?
How does it differ from other concierge services, such as the one connected to American Express cards? What have others typically done well and poorly, and how does Magic+ overcome the limitations?
I believe the employees are only paid $15 an hour.
Progress and efficiency is great, but I wonder if we (you and I, common devs) are digging our own graves.
Last time, I used it as follows:
1) Lunch for my cofounder and I at demo day since we had dietary restrictions. Worked perfectly.
2) went drinking with everyone after demo day, and we drove. Didn't plan out who was DD. Magic sent us a driver to drive us home in our car. Was one of the Magic founders' sister.
3) Had flowers sent to my wife, just to let her know I was thinking of her while I was away. Said they were the best flowers she had ever got, and got lots of compliments from family and friends.
Yesterday, I was just thinking about using Magic to get a bunch of things done, housekeeping wise within the company. Really timely to see this. I'll be using them for everything from fixing my glasses, to cleaning up my books, and more. I'm hoping to have them take care of the mundane things so I can focus on more important tasks like coding and such.
> There is no markup on the purchases you make through Magic+. We find you the best deals that we can on every purchase, and we negotiate strongly with vendors. Often you will save more money using Magic+ than if you had done things yourself.
... I see a conflict of interest there.
Check their competitors to compare pricing, these might be comparatively cheaper without compromising on quality
http://www.habiliss.com/indiv/virtual-assistant-services-pri... http://www.asksunday.com/dedicatedplanspricing https://www.redbutler.com/plans
Can I use it from a non-US phone carrier? How do I pay? Would be really interested in testing it. Is there a direct/non-short number?
1. This is fascinating to watch
2. How is Magic going to compete with Facebook M and www.GoButler.com? Butler does all the things Magic does but for free. And Facebook M is being rolled out to more and more people.
3. Is there space for a premium concierge assistant that gives even better service than Butler or M can do? What prevents Butler or M from simply rolling out a premium $25/hour service and undercutting Magic if this segment proves valuable.
4. Isn't the real money in massive scale. Will Magic simply be a small concierge shop for the very wealthy and will we all use Facebook M for most tasks in the future?
Let say, for example, that i need a cab to move me from airport to the hotel with a bike to make the thing more complicated for a lambda traveler. How can I know in advance how much I will have to pay ? that the deal is decent ? that the guy will actually come ?
I understand that they target rich people but I imagine one does not simply want to pay 200% more than usually a helicopter ride...
So I challenge the amount of money Magic needs to pay the very best assistants, not the price to the customers. And while the automation will increase the amount of time spent on the job by each assistant delivering outcomes, it's a very exhausting day for them to deliver this sort of level of service non stop.
Over time the automation will increase the margins, but for now the best assistants will be setting themselves up to be poached by the best clients.
PS: Before you downvote me to death, want to clarify that the envy is that someone can use this service paying 100/hr :)
Q: What kinds of things can I use Magic+ for?
Anything you want. As long as it’s not illegal. Seriously.
"I need you guys to unscramble this omelette by 5pm..."
Kidding, and violating laws of nature aside, am rooting for the Magic+ team. Good luck!
> As soon as possible.
So... it's not magic.
At their price point, it's only worth using the service if you have huge amounts of disposable income or your request is near impossible to fulfill on your own. It's basically a service that answers the question, "How much are you willing to spend to do X?" Where the amount is determined by them after the fact.
> It’s $100/hr to use Magic+. You only get charged for the minutes you use it for. If your request takes 12 minutes, you’ll only be charged for 12 minutes.
This could be affordable in small does depending how much time a human is allocated to do the task. I wonder if it's possible to know the estimate before you commit to buying.
http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/46539276780/...
People are paying for a convenient service - nothing special about it. Some pay the neighbors kid $20 to mow the lawn, others pay Magic $100 to get something done that would otherwise be a hassle for them. Same shit.
The original "pay per use" service is still offered at https://getmagicnow.com/
E.g., cancelling a doctor's appointment takes 10 minutes. Even if you bill your time out at $50 / hour, you've now saved yourself the trouble of making a random phone call for 16 bucks and remain focused on what you're actually good at.
Problem is that most tasks likely to waste my time are things that would take longer to delegate (due to detailed instructions, needing to answer questions about needs, needing to set them up with the ability to pay bills...) than to just do myself.
So was Tesla initially. That didn't make it unworthy of tech news coverage. As this sort of technology matures and become more accessible to the general public, it has a reasonable chance of being the "next big thing". That makes its launch newsworthy to the people in the industry.
The $100/hr rate bugs me a little. Some people's time is worth more than that and other is less.
"Magic, can you get me HIV test results for my wife?"
"Magic, what is my boss's salary?"
Yeah, no issues coming up with this...
Oh god, I can't stop laughing.
“Find someone to train me like Jason Bourne.” Hahaha.
