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.<p>Not sure if this is because of how quickly this blew up, but well done.
I love the idea, and the execution, but just one nit -- you say "no hidden fees", but I think bundling the fee into the total price is the definition of <i>a hidden fee</i>. If your examples itemized the fee it would be a different story. Other comments here express a similar anxiety, e.g. how much [extra] am I actually paying for this?<p>Also, I know you're busy, but FYI CA state law requires you have a Privacy Policy. I would like to know how long you retain records and who you are sharing them with before doing business with you!
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.<p>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...<p>I'm here to answer any questions, although we've hardly slept!
I discovered this through a Facebook thread that has a ton of comments on it from non HN or techie peeps. Thought you might want to know what normal non-techies think.<p>"I think it is a great idea that has potential but I personally wouldn't use them because I can't find anything about them on the website. Looks like a scam."<p>"They need to re-design their website so it doesn't look like it was slapped together in 10 minutes and add an about page so we know who they are."<p>"Not even a business at this point."<p>"This stuff kind of annoys me actually. I get the minimal product concept to test the market but when stuff like this is pushed out there it makes consumers very wary."<p>"These guys will take this to some bay area VC's and probably get funded because it blew up on Reddit and HN with a bunch of other techies. Meh!"<p>"It is going to take some serious $$ to get a service like this going. The support alone for handling inbound texts and having reps look for and book deals is a very big undertaking."<p>"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy."
I just decided to try this out in Seattle. Here's how it went! <a href="http://brianbeck.com/images/magic.png" rel="nofollow">http://brianbeck.com/images/magic.png</a><p>(the minimum was from the sushi place, not Magic)
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 <i>miniscule</i> in comparison to other operations. I don't have units, but it's probably an order of magnitude lower in any reasonable ones.<p>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.<p>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 <i>flip it closed and stop thinking about it</i>. This is the key. You're using it when you're using it, and you're not when you're not.<p>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.
Do you know what would really be magical? An on-demand service that provided a guarantee that all of the humans involved were beneficiaries of living wages, unemployment and workers comp protection, health insurance etc. I really enjoy the convenience these services provide, but ultimately that's all it is - convenience. To me, no convenience is worth watching an entire class of people get 1099-ed into poverty, at the expense of the social safety net that so many people struggled to establish.<p>When I discuss these issues with my peers (I live in the SF Bay Area), I find that many of them share my concerns, to varying degrees. Does anybody know if such a service exists?
Wow, everyone! This is truly amazing. We released Magic under 48 hours ago as an experiment and a side project, and now the traffic and requests are streaming in faster than we can handle.<p>Don't worry - we have a plan to handle it. For now we are closing down free registrations so that we can focus on delivering the product to the awesome people who have signed up so far and who are using the service.<p>I've replaced the phone number on the page you see here with an email opt-in waiting list where you can sign up to be notified when Magic is available to you.<p>In the meantime, I have added a Stripe button for $20 after the email opt-in where you can gain access now if you want to get in right now.<p>Thanks everyone!
This is exactly what Siri should be.<p>Apple has 800m credit cards on file (1)<p>In one fell swoop Apple could own the local delivery market, shocking how perfect of a concept / execution this is.<p>(1) <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/credit-cards-on-file-apple-vs-amazon-2014-4" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/credit-cards-on-file-apple-vs...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>I just added this phone number to my contact list for when I'm reading to use it.
Idea to scale:<p>As a non-coder, I love reading the responses of programers here. "Automate this!" "There is no way to scale." "This needs AI."<p>As an outsider looking in, my idea to scale is similar to Uber. Have workers that can sign on to work whenever they have the time. The workers handle the orders and receive a cut of the fee you charge. It would be great if you could have some kind of rating system where the consumer could choose who they work with, but I'm not sure how to make that happen with SMS.<p>I'm not saying this is better or more cost efficient than automation. I just see it as a solution to their current problem.<p>Uber is looking to automate, but check out their current valuation. They can afford to do so all by scaling with humans.<p>I'll now wait to get hammered by HN. :)
Does no one else consider the idea of this horribly decadent? They give as an example, ordering a delivery pizza for you, which is already a decadent activity and something you can accomplish with a single phone call anyway.
Maybe for the rich high-flying silicon valley types, your time and brain space is so valuable that this service makes sense. But if that is the case maybe you should re-examine your lives.
From someone who's tried and failed: performing a large amount of high-quality labor for cheap is not a sustainable business model in the West, and riding hype can make you oblivious to that fact.<p>That said, I do hope this team has some amazing trick under their sleeves that has eluded everyone else, because I do want this service to exist.
Arthur C. Clarke famously said <i>any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.</i> 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 <i>humans</i> could seem in any way magical?<p>I don't agree, but a scary indictment if it were true.<p>Clever business name though.
Is this really new in the states? In sweden we've had these numbers called 118 100, or 118 118 where it costs relatively much to call in but they can take care of a lot of things for you.<p>For example since my company pays for my phone I tend to use them for things like getting a taxi wherever I am. "I want a taxi in X city". And they can do this via SMS or phone call, they can send the reply via phone or via sms if you want, included in the service charge.<p>Essentially they can do what magic claims, with operators standing by 24/7, for a service fee that comes from your phone operator.<p>We've had this in Sweden for many, many years now. I don't even remember how long but I know that some time 6-7 years ago they started advertising that you could call them (or text them) about any stupid question you might have and they would try to answer it.<p>If this magic really is new to the states then I predict it will explode just like our swedish alternatives have here.
Sounds like <i>General Services</i> from the story <i>We Also Walk Dogs</i>. See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs</a> for the story.<p>I'll bet they don't invent antigravity devices though! :-)
I created a service very similar to this about 2 years ago and no one cared. Given my experience, I'm stunned (but happy) to see so much praise for this. Anyway, congratulations....looks like you have that right time/right product/right place thing going on. How do you intend to monetize? If I buy a pizza, do you charge me directly (a premium) and then pay Domino's et al? How many people do you have to handle the deluge of texts? Do you intend to seek affiliate relationships with local merchants where you can't charge a known fee up front (for example, where someone says "Dude, I need a plumber ASAP!")?
This is the most amazing startup I've ever seen on HN. There's no app, there's nothing to install.<p>I need Magic in my life. I hate ordering, filling out forms, etc. Pease scale this thing hard and fast. This is Uber-level fantastic. Better than that, even.
Have you thought about chargeback risks? I.e. when you hit mass-market there will be a non-trivial number of attempts in which customer cancels the payment to you after receiving the ordered product on the basis that it was not what he ordered. It seems that it can be quite a mess to figure those situations out due to suppliers being so varied.
My first thought to this is: How is it going to scale? This requires human labor to be behind every service requests!<p>And then I was reminded of Uber. Isn't Uber in the same sort of service model that requires a human driver for every request, but is doing super successful? (let's not talk about regulation.)<p>The more I think about it, the more it appears a good business model. It definitely helps users save time and worry, and as demand is growing, it can simply hire more trained service men, and creates huge job opportunities.<p>This is a platform that enables/accelerates service to people by people. I'm optimistic of its future.
Looks like an even more minimal version of WunWun (<a href="https://www.wunwun.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wunwun.com/</a>), 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.
They say that they guarantee credit card security by using an HTTPS link. How is that even security? We don't even know for sure if this is a legitimate service. What does it matter if they are getting the CC number via SSL or not?
Great idea.<p>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.
Can you somehow handle requests that are primarily research questions, that don't necessarily culminate in an immediate (or an intermediated) financial translation?<p>I'm just thinking about requests that ask for a recommendation for a product or a service that won't be purchased right away (like finding a certain kind of restaurant with certain parameters, but not getting food delivered from it, or finding a certain kind of professional service without immediately contracting for it).<p>Or for that matter factual questions like "Who won the 2014 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature?".<p>Would this somehow look like "I found 3, and I'll tell you about them for $5, OK?"? Will people be more resistant to paying the fee if the fee is the only item they're paying, rather than bundled with the price of some other transaction?
This is an example of "execution is everything." People might try this as novelty. If it gets any traction, there will be millions of imitators. This won't succeed or fail because of the idea, but because of execution.<p>This needs to be really awesome to be good, really awesome. So awesome people get dependant.
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?
This seems a lot like fancy hands, via text messaging. The big difference I see is that there is no monthly commitment. Since my personal assistant quit, I've been using Fancy Hands I have been quite delighted by the service.
I'd love to know the model that this business uses. I dug into fancy hands a little bit and it seems like the operations are not quite so straightforward(crowdsourcing what the headache of managing employees).
When I first looked through this I assumed this was coded onto fancy hands API. But given the scaling issues and the pricing structure of this app it probably isn't.
I can already order pizza and flowers and plane tickets myself. However, if you could handle requests like:<p><pre><code> 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.
</code></pre>
... I can see this whole "magic" concept going places. :)
I love the absurdly simple way this works. That said, maybe there should be some form of (appropriately simple) authentication on each request, because what if my phone gets stolen/lost?
This is neat. I like the simple execution, and I'm working on something metaphorically similar in that I'm using Stripe and other separate Bitcoin APIs in a similar "amalgamated" way to create a well-rounded application that does a simple service really well. This gives me the confidence that a "mashup"-like concept isn't necessarily the downfall of a service, so long as it provides real value to the end-user.<p>I wish the Magic team the best!
Maybe one approach is to start by doing everything by hand but then gradually try to automate things. This would not work for answering questions, but when it comes to ordering things I would assume majority of orders would fall into not-so-many categories.<p>It could be valuable to just record all the transactions and how the agents filled them. What the customer asked, what kind of questions the agent asked, did agent Google for the service, what steps did they take on web sites to perform the order etc. If you have this kind of data for thousands of transactions that might have some value for Google, Apple or other companies working to build digital assistants.<p>For more complex/expensive purchases one added value thing for customer could be that the agent knows how to find a good deal. There's for example a service (or maybe just a forum) where people can post their travel plans and airline ticketing experts compete to provide the best ticket options.<p>One obvious income source that comes to my mind is affiliate fees and companies paying for you to introduce them for new customers. This is of course also difficult one since customers would like you to recommended the best provider and not the one that pays best affiliate fees.
This looks identical to Jarvis: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351</a>
<p><pre><code> > We will send you a 128-bit encrypted HTTPS link via SMS that you can click to enter your credit card number. We do not store your credit card number. All payment processing is handled by Stripe.
</code></pre>
What if one of your operators sends me a link to pay them instead and I never get what I asked for?<p>Also, for something people are wary is a scam, saying "be careful what you wish for" in your first reply is a little bit ominous!
I see almost no barrier to entry for this idea and as some commentors pointed out- this has been done before- although today does feel like the right time to succeed because these other services are maturing.<p>Why not turn this into an excess capacity market where you enable anyone to easily offer this service themselves...especially if they have local insights.<p>This seems like a good way for anyone to Make a few bucks in their free time.
If you've never read it, this is the time to read the Heinlein classic, "We Also Walk Dogs."[1] This is exactly the business he describes.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.lightforcenetwork.com/sites/default/files/%5BHeinlein_Robert_Anson%5D_We_Also_Walk_Dogs%28BookFi.org%29.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.lightforcenetwork.com/sites/default/files/%5BHein...</a>
uhhm... in italy we have this kind of service for years (I remember back in the '80s when there was still one national telephonic company there was this number "12" you could call to have infos).<p>There is now a profusion of heritage (like <a href="http://www.1240.it" rel="nofollow">http://www.1240.it</a>, <a href="http://www.892424.it" rel="nofollow">http://www.892424.it</a>, etc).
I love it! Sounds like Heinlein's "General Services" -- no job too big, no job too small.<p>"Want somebody murdered? Then DON'T call General Services. But for anything else, call.... It Pays!"<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94We_Also_Walk_Dogs</a>
This is crazy, I was just brainstorming about this last week. You're basically layering concierges on top of remote hands. Awesome!<p>I'm curious to see what you'll do to handle exceptional cases. I live in the boonies and am asking for a philly cheesesteak right now.
About a week ago, my team and I also launched a similar service in India - Genie (www.getagenie.in). I am happy to answer any questions or concerns from Indian market standpoint. We have built a concierge technology platform that our crowdsourced Genies (of course we handpick only the best) uses to serve the customers. We take a bit different route in pricing/offering where we provide an actual assistant (ofcourse shared and available via text, call or email) who takes the customer to know personally and provide both reactive (customer asking for a plumber for example) and proactive (Genie coming up with ideas on customer anniversary for example) services.
The front-end looks awesome.<p>But will it scale?<p>To me, the obvious value of your business is in being able to train Operators up to the Magic corporate standard. If you can do this while growing the service, you've got a real winner - especially if you put up a web front end to make it possible to become a Magic operator anywhere in the world. I'd be quite happy to do this kind of service work from home - as long as I had the tools to support me, and I think ultimately thats where your real value is going to be - certainly growing the customer base is valuable, too. But being able to train/service Operators who can do the job properly is going to be the key to it all ..
I'm curious to know how they can cover the entire US.<p>Obviously, I realize they can't, I just wonder how often their answer to the query is "Sorry, we can't do this".<p>Overall, I think it's a great idea but the fact that it's bottlenecked by humans will make it very, very hard to scale (and you can already see this as the web site has a big banner saying the service is currently restricted due to high demand).<p>Still, it's clear from the testimonials so far that these guys have their heart in the right place and they really want to achieve maximum user satisfaction. Kudos!
Many people here are making the argument that this is more efficient than opening up an app or going to a UI. However after looking at one poster's times of actually using the service, it seems like the opposite. (<a href="http://brianbeck.com/images/magic-times.png" rel="nofollow">http://brianbeck.com/images/magic-times.png</a>)<p>For someone who gets really overwhelmed by too many texts, this seems like a lot of back and forth compared to just googling to find the number of the restaurant and ordering.
Nice idea and like others here I really appreciate the simple plain web page. Best of luck with it all.<p>Just a thought for when this begins to scale: vetting of the people ordering the stuff. They will have names, email, delivery address and an idea of the income level/lifestyle of the person ordering. I'm assuming credit card details are on a payment system and not available to the people handing the requests.<p>PS: any customers complained about what they got yet?
Just to sign up (before I asked for anything), the credit card form is for a $20 initial payment... with no explanation if this goes towards your first purchase, or not?
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/J5TKJO5.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/J5TKJO5.png</a><p>Also, they're using a Stripe account managed by this company: <a href="https://bettir.com" rel="nofollow">https://bettir.com</a>
This looks great! It would be really cool if, in the far future, this service could make deals to cut out some of the natural 'fee stacking' that occurs. If you order from magic and magic uses Postmates, you're going to pay a delivery fee to each service. This will add up to probably 20-30% of the price, but that's the price of convenience I guess.
Great site, and exciting service.<p>One little nitpick: the blue chat bubbles on the site gave me the impression you'd be using iMessage for supported phones instead of SMS. (This matters to me just a bit because I have a limited number of SMSes per month.) I totally get why you would just stick to SMS.<p>Still happy to use your service, but it did create just the tiniest bit of initial dissapointment.
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.<p>A blog post after all of it cools down would be a fun read. :)
Maybe it's me but i don't feel confident giving my credit card after reading the home page.
After reading the whole page i understand the business but my first impression was really somewhere between "is this a joke ? / they are stealing credit card numbers"<p>Maybe the very cheap design discredit the whole project.
Holy shit, they flinched! Magic, get your act together. Seriously, do not cut off potential exponential growth like this. You need to get talented operators in place and fake it until the AI is ready. Understand your role, you are a <i>sales channel</i>. Make it happen and make it big.
And yet another cool startup I'm going to have to wait to expand to the UK.<p>Good work guys, and I agree with everything that everyone else said about the simplicity of your landing page, and the controversial design decision to actually communicate information.
This seems like another one of this startup ideas that will blow up, sell for $X,000,000 in a few weeks/months, then die as the fad wears off.<p>Congrats on being so successful so far, but my advice would be to sell out before the investors loose interest!
Just FYI, My company used to offer Les Concierge for something very similar, until recently. They stopped it because people were not really using the service. So, inspite of the coolness of the startup, I am skeptical if it makes money.
I love how the Hacker News crowd is consistent over the course of 200 days: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351</a>
How would you deal with the following cases?<p>- people using the service just to figure out the price of something (and then declining)?<p>- people not being happy with what they got delivered (perhaps rightfully so), and wanting their money back?
Took a few more minutes than I expected, but it checks out.<p><a href="http://f.cl.ly/items/3l3h3j3c0N3Q1h1A2A3O/IMG_3684.PNG" rel="nofollow">http://f.cl.ly/items/3l3h3j3c0N3Q1h1A2A3O/IMG_3684.PNG</a>
A joke I always had was that startups always have the "we do it so you don't have to" headline. Applies so perfectly here!<p>Still, looks like a very nice idea, might try it if I ever need something :)
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?
OK, I haven't read all the comments yet, and, sadly, when I texted the Magic number, I was wait listed, but I think this is a great idea and will definitely use it if prices are fair.
Since this is just a middleman to other services, even like instacart, it's more expensive. I wonder why humans are so lazy nowadays just to get trivial things done.
What guarantee of customer satisfaction is offered? If your fees are "bundled" how do you intend to refund in the event of poor service by the final provider?
Hey just a heads-up - your logo looks very similar to the one Magic FM use - <a href="http://www.magic.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.magic.co.uk/</a>
PRODUCERS. This is huge for producers. Please keep this in mind. A producer on set who needs something special delivered ASAP will pay a PREMIUM for this kinda service.
Like a high speed freight train smashing through a wooden fence with horns blazing, and speeding on. This is a great idea and really simple execution. I love it.
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!
If Magic is going to be the one selecting the services, this may cost Google and others a great deal in ad revenue.<p>How would they respond to this? Their own meta-service?
How do you handle support issues - returns, exchanges, credits? Same mechanism?<p>Where do you draw the line on "anything"?<p>Also, this whole thing is April Fool's joke, right?
It's a dream project for me this kind of adventure.<p>If you are lokking for some jack of all trade to help you , or looking for some one in france.<p>I'am in ...<p>Btw good luck.<p>Bussiere AT gmail.com
Just want to point out that such a service wouldn't work in India. The Reserve Bank of India has stipulated that all "card-not-present" transactions (such as online purchases) require a secondary authentication (Verified by VISA password or a grid printed on the back of card). This improves the security but also pushes the liability to the consumer, given that he is not supposed to share this secondary password with anyone else.
Yet another technology lifted straight out of an anime: Eden of the East [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_of_the_East" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_of_the_East</a>] where contestants compete to win a reality game with access to a concierge by phone backed by a staggering sum of money.
looks like you guys blew up and had to limit orders. bummer. would love to give this a shot as I get my invite! great idea, hopefully the execution is good.
Fewer peeople are using SMS today. In US, WhatsApp is preferred text message app; In Japan and Taiwan, everyone uses Line while rest of Asia uses WeChat. Any plan to support those Apps?
Color me flabbergasted. Props to these guys for launching an MVP and all that, but seriously - what a value proposition: "Why order online when you can get someone else to do that for you adding an undisclosed middleman fee?". First world problems.
Has our society really come to simply throwing money on paying two separate third parties to order FOOD? I use Magic, to use Postmates, to get Chipotle?! No offense but I feel like this is the most first world solution I've ever encountered. Congrats on the success and traffic though and best of luck on executing.
this adds a voice interface to all apps/services that do the fulfillment on the back end.<p>now you can safely order food to be delivered when driving home. or laundry pickup, or whatever.<p>"siri, text magic, i want a large pepperoni pizza delivered to my home in 1 hour."
From some of the comments here it sounds like you're using a long code (phone number) rather than a short code for your sms messages.<p>The FCC has been cracking down on the use of long codes in marketing. Not sure about an app like your's though... But you probably should move to a short code anyway.<p>There are also very strong requirements for how opting in, opting out, etc works.<p><a href="http://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing-forward/2013/01/02/sms-compliance-what-you-dont-know-can-hurt-you/" rel="nofollow">http://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing-forward/2013/01/02/s...</a>
I love this idea, but I'm absolutely terrified of the possible implications from a liability standpoint.<p>When you guys get slammed with fraud, give me a shout.
Perhaps the site's creators will be kind enough to consider the privacy issues regarding Google Fonts: <a href="http://fontfeed.com/archives/google-webfonts-the-spy-inside/" rel="nofollow">http://fontfeed.com/archives/google-webfonts-the-spy-inside/</a>
My baby daughter is five days overdue. My three-year-old son keeps asking when he'll be a big brother. And my wife and I are trying to figure out how we'll do the grocery shopping—or even focus on a computer screen long enough to shop online—once we're juggling two kids. When I told my wife about Magic, she visibly relaxed. This service has huge, huge potential.