
Magic+ - calvin_c
https://getmagicnow.com/plus
======
paul
A lot of skepticism here, which is understandable given the somewhat
unbelievable scope of what they are promising.

I'm a very active user of Magic+, so I'll give my perspective. (and of course
I've been working with them from the beginning at YC, so you're also free to
discard my opinion as biased)

For me, Magic+ is basically the impossibly good personal assistant, kind of
like Jarvis in Iron Man, or Emily in The 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.

~~~
rtpg
>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

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"

~~~
toddmorey
There's a decent amount of innovation that can make the assistants more
efficient, so you can improve profitability without driving down wages. But
there's also something else:

Since a high percentage of services will likely end in a transaction, there's
a huge opportunity to become the Amazon-scale retailer of services. I find I
don't even google products I want to buy anymore, I just immediately search
Amazon. 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.

~~~
Splines
Personally, Amazon's UI has a long way to go and doesn't look like it's going
to get better anytime soon.

If you know what you're looking for, it's fine, but as soon as you try to
comparison shop it falls apart fairly quickly.

I've gotten into the habit of looking for experts on other sites that do
hands-on comparisons for the thing I want to buy (some recent examples: rain
jackets and fitness meters). Amazon is honestly a terrible UI for this sort of
thing.

I know that they're trying, but at this point they've lost my trust that what
they show in search results is relevant unless I'm being extremely precise.

~~~
pricechild
> Personally, Amazon's UI has a long way to go and doesn't look like it's
> going to get better anytime soon.

Haven't people been dismissing them over their UI since the beginning of time?
And yet it works and is successful?

~~~
TeMPOraL
The sad thing is - UIs generally don't matter if there's anything else making
your product special. You can make your users as miserable as you want, and
they will still use your service. Companies know it and prioritize effort
accordingly.

~~~
IgorPartola
Agreed. See Craigslist.

~~~
wlesieutre
Craigslist's UI is great! High contrast text. All links are obvious (no iOS
style "is that colored text or a button"). It loads quickly. I can find the
information I need without hunting around a bunch of ads masquerading as
useful content.

As an added bonus, I don't have to relearn how to use it every 6 months when
the design team gets bored and decides to redo the whole thing for no good
reason.

There are a few additions I'd like to see (PadMapper style apartment search
being the big one), but all things considered I like Craigslist a lot more
than most websites.

Compare it to Amazon where half of the items are miscategorized, sort by price
doesn't actually sort by price, and sort by average customer rating is way too
literal. In what world do I want to see something with a single 5 star review
over the one with 191 reviews, 94% of which are 5 star, and another 4% are 4
star? But that's tucked away on page 7 of the results after all the items with
nothing but a single good review. Amazon's got issues to work out.

------
joslin01
Looks like the reception isn't doing too well. I remember when Magic launched
here on HN and it BLEW up. I was one of the people who tried it out. I live in
NYC and actually had a poor experience.

The first two times, I said "hey I want a sandwich with [x]" and I got it but
it took a lot longer than if I just clicked the necessary buttons on Seamless.
Then I kept getting random calls from time to time from pizza 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.

~~~
cdata
I had a very similar outcome with Magic after trying really hard to rely on
it. One of their suggested usages is to order flowers for someone, so I tried
that on two different occasions.

The first time around, I asked for flowers, and got a picture of some flowers
that they could send to my recipient. I didn't like the flowers in the
picture, and so they picked another set of flowers per some feedback from me.
The 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?

~~~
nl
If it's any consolation, I once had a flower company deliver an empty box to
someone's office. That was pretty embarrassing!

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's the problem with depending on companies like that. There's zero
accountability, you can do absolutely NIL to hurt them, but if they fuck up,
it can do big damage to your affairs.

I had a flower shop almost fail on the delivery - we agreed on the flowers,
date and place, and then... they _forgot_. They simply forgot about the
delivery. Luckily I called them in time and they managed to get their shit
together and deliver the bouquet literally minutes before I was about to
suffer a big embarrassment if the flowers were not there.

------
BookmarkSaver
Ok. I must seriously be missing something here. I'm usually the last person to
complain about shilling, because even on the very rare occasions that I am
confident that some sort of "astroturf" operation is going on I usually find
it to be a somewhat valid or at least entertaining form of promotion and don't
care that it is clearly just advertising.

But seriously, this thread is absurd. I truly do not understand how 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.

~~~
_yosefk
Perhaps someone sent a request to Magic+ along the lines of "I want Magic+ to
become the number one item on HN"? It's legal, it's possible - and they're on
it. It'd make a decent demo!

~~~
reitoei
This is genius.

~~~
thecrazyone
> This is genius. No it's magic+ :D

------
nlh
I'm trying to figure out why I (too) am having a strong negative reaction to
this. Let me think out loud:

I'm fortunate enough to have a real personal assistant. She's amazing, she
knows me, she does fantastic work, and I pay her a fair and reasonable wage
(including health care) that's far less than $100/hour. So let's put me in the
category of "people who can afford a personal assistant" but not quite in the
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.

~~~
jld89
Just curious, but what is your line of work and that of your friends with
assistants?

~~~
nlh
I work in tech (but started and sold several companies previously). Of the
first three friends who have assistants that come to mind: two are CEOs and
one runs a hedge fund. I guess no surprises :)

------
tghw
I just signed up to see if they could renegotiate my Comcast price for me. It
turns out you have to buy either 10 hours at $100/hour or 40 hours at $75/hour
to get started. That's _way_ too steep to try something out.

~~~
chemmail
It will probably take those 10 hours being on old for comcast to pickup. You
think i'm joking.

~~~
op00to
Why wouldn't Magic+ have a relationship with Comcast where they can bypass the
queues? Seems like a natural relationship to have.

~~~
FireBeyond
Then I, as someone who manages a remote development shop and pays Comcast in
the several thousands a month for Internet access, would be pissed that -I-
don't get such access.

Why on earth should Magic have a "preferred relationship" so they can make
money letting their customers skip the line I'm waiting in?

------
minimaxir
I really am not a fan of the hyperminimalistic "we can do anything trust us!"
landing pages that _every_ text-for-personal-assistant seems to think is
brilliant marketing copy.

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.)

~~~
cmikec
Thanks for the feedback. Magic has been in an interesting position as a
startup ever since our website went viral in Feb. 2015. Starting then, we've
had more demand than supply for our product every single day. That's why we
never iterated our original landing page -- marketing was never our biggest
problem, in fact it was our smallest. That said, I completely agree with you,
that there would be much more powerful ways of communicating that you can
trust us. Most of our signups come from word of mouth from real users at this
point though, so it's not as much of an issue.

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.

~~~
newman314
Even if the time is broken down, what's the incentive to be as efficient/cost-
effective as possible? I get that cost is not the primary driver here but
surely it is not open-ended.

Also, invariably with a complex task, there's going to be a lot of dead time
spent waiting while coordinating.

~~~
digbyloftus
Isn't that effectively a problem for any hourly based service? What's the
incentive for a lawyer, accountant, developer, anyone to be as cost effective
as possible? Surely the answer to that (happy customers, repeat business,
referrals) would apply here as well. Even if hypothetically it wasn't as
efficient as possible yet they still managed to deliver quality results, whats
the problem? You're paying for results not effort, no?

------
spdustin
1) How does one become a Magic+ "Magician"?

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.

~~~
flippyhead
Maybe you could use Magic+ to audit the legal practices of Magic.

------
jcrites
I use Magic and they provide incredible service. They've been able to
accomplish pretty much everything I've asked, including some requests that I
thought were borderline outlandish, such as having food from a restaurant
across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's
birthday as a big flashy surprise (friend's favorite restaurant).

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.)

~~~
Archio
> such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via
> chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise

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).

~~~
mbrameld
You wouldn't need an extravagant income to do something like that. I just did
a quick check and it costs less than $150 to overnight an 8lb package from NY
to SF with 8am delivery. So the markup over just buying the meal at the
restaurant is going to be less than $300 once you add refrigerated packaging
and pay somebody to order it, pick it up, package it, and ship it. That's
pricey if you're doing it every week, but for a special occasion that's not
unimaginable for somebody even at the low end of middle class.

~~~
njharman
I think most middle class people would think $300+ for a meal is wildly
extravagant. And would think a $300 gift for "a friend" is on high end of
gifts.

~~~
joslin01
As a middle class person struggling to get day by day -- yes, yes it is.

~~~
themartorana
Semantics, but if you're struggling, you're not middle class. At least not in
the classical sense.

It's a shame the downward pressures that have made "struggling to get by" the
middle class norm. The whole point of the thriving middle class (in the US at
least) was that, with a willingness to work, you could live comfortably, with
a house and two cars and 2 kids.

This isn't meant to be insulting or directed at you - it's just a new
definition of middle class, that the struggle builds character or your
struggling is an indicator of your value or lack of hard work, that I find
almost infuriating.

End rant, I suppose.

~~~
joslin01
Well we all have our struggles I suppose. I hear what you're saying though. I
think money has lost a lot of its value.

------
exogen
I haven't used the $100/hour Magic+, but I've used Magic several times. I
ordered sushi when it was first announced and the HN comment about my
experience got a lot of interest.

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!

------
pyrrhotech
Another service for the 1%. This one will go the way of homejoy. These kids
don't understand how tight the household budget is for nearly all Americans.

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.

~~~
nilkn
The problem with Homejoy, in my opinion, was not price. It was the fact that
it made little sense to keep using them after you found a cleaner you liked.
As a middle man, they simply did not provide much value.

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.

------
SwellJoe
I predict a few things for the future of this service (and this kind of
service):

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.

------
bigtunacan
This sounds a bit like Uber for personal assistants. So for people in the top
1% they can now have 24/7 personal assistants at probably about the same cost
as they previously paid for a 9 to 5-er.

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.

------
habosa
“Find someone to train me like Jason Bourne.” “Get me a mobile dentist to my
office ASAP.” “I want to meet Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.” “I need to rent out
the Exploratorium this weekend.” “I need 6 convertibles tomorrow for rent.”
“Organize my team for a town hall tomorrow.” “My 1 pm ran over. Bump my
meetings back 1 hour.” “I’m out of the office today. Check my email and let me
know if there’s anything urgent.”

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.

~~~
cmikec
These are all real requests that our users have actually used Magic+ for. We
obviously cant divulge their identities, or show photographs, etc. (since
these are personal things), but it's important to convey how people really use
the service. I'd love ideas on how we can communicate this point better. Part
of what our users love about Magic+ is that you truly can do some pretty
amazing things with it.

~~~
ethbro
If there's a way to anonymize data (or even just flag requests as anonymous in
content), it'd be nice to have a bit more of a randomly picked live feed.

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. ;)

~~~
istorical
These aren't supposed to be average requests, they are there to demonstrate
how Magic+ can handle even really difficult tasks without easy solutions
(order me a pizza).

~~~
ethbro
As other people stated, if there isn't some kind of detail on the fulfillment
then it's not demonstrating anything. Forgive my skepticism, but a chat log
doesnt count for much in an age where CGI'ing uncompleted UIs on device
screens in startup project videos is "acceptable".

So the choice is between exorbitant claims + no detail or some exorbitant
claims + some average claims + no detail.

------
dcpdx
This is like Tesla entering the market with a high end sports car, or Uber
entering the market with only black cars. They're targeting a smaller niche of
wealthy early adopters to tweak the service and revenue model and will
eventually move downmarket to address a broader customer base (if they're
successful with this initial niche). This is an ideal niche to start with
because a) they have the money for it b) they're more tech savvy and generally
forgiving of product shortfalls for bleeding edge services and c) they have
lots of connections and can spread word-of-mouth more effectively (think Chris
Dixon). It will be interesting to see if this becomes more of an API for other
on-demand platforms such as Seamless or if it will be standalone. Also curious
to see how this will stack up to Facebook's M and if they've built something
defensible enough to pose a real threat.

~~~
timr
The metaphor is faulty. Uber hasn't brought down the cost of limousine
service, and it didn't make cars cheaper or more efficient to create UberX --
it just tapped into a larger market of drivers who were willing to do
commodity work for less money.

You don't pay people $100 an hour for commodity work. Unless you're so rich
that price doesn't matter, I guess.

~~~
dcpdx
Perhaps I should have extended it a bit more--as someone else commented, they
will likely drive the price point down as the tech improves and they're able
to do things algorithmically which will reduce overhead. The Tesla strategy is
probably a better fit here than Uber, though.

~~~
timr
Yeah, I understood what you were getting at. That's why I was emphasizing the
difference between _commodity_ services (like driving a cab) and services that
require specialized skill (like being a concierge that can get you into _the_
restaurant, tonight, or a meeting with a celebrity). The former you can
"scale" by throwing relatively unskilled people at it. The latter takes
training, connections and experience.

Even Tesla isn't a good comparison. Tesla is making cars, the task that
_invented_ the assembly line. This more like applying "the Tesla strategy" to
the job of a butler.

------
omarforgotpwd
Good morning, I read all your email while you slept. Your wife is very pretty.
I wrote a message to your son telling him you loved him. He responded "you're
not my real dad". I also hired that Visual Basic expert who emailed you
yesterday. Don't worry, I already charged your AMEX $230 for the trouble.

~~~
cmikec
This would be a real risk if you hired an ordinary personal assistant. This is
actually exactly the sort of challenge that traditional assistants pose and
that Magic+ is designed to fix.

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.

~~~
omarforgotpwd
I have a real assistant. I've known her for years and trust her. I don't know
who you guys are hiring, who will see my info, whether your internal systems
are secure, etc. I've used magic before and liked it but clearly there is a
signicant loss of privacy cost that is paid in addition to the hourly rate.

------
dyladan
I thought this was satire. Came here to see the jokes. None of you seem to be
treating it like satire though.

~~~
Someone1234
Why did you think it was satire? They're just trying to offer a personal
assistant service over the air, nothing that beyond imagination. Likely costs
less than actually employing someone.

~~~
npizzolato
I too thought it was satire. Two of their examples are "I need to buy $2500
worth of electronics tonight like it's nothing" and "get me a private
helicopter tonight for $3500", all the while paying $100/hour for the
privilege.

I understand some people spend money like that, but it seemed more likely that
someone was making a joke about absurd wealth and the startup scene than a
real business. If the Onion wrote an article about it, I wouldn't bat an eye.

Best of luck to the Magic+ team (honestly), but this product clearly isn't for
people like me.

~~~
justinpombrio
It's funny seeing half the commenters here saying "surely no one could afford
that" and the other half saying "surely any middle class person could use this
to splurge on a $200+ gift for a friend on occasion". It's as if people aren't
aware of the wealth gap.

------
bredren
I'd love to try this, as there is an out-of-production bag that is probably
out there but I could not find this holiday season.

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.

~~~
TulliusCicero
I think it makes sense that they only want people who are serious about it. If
they didn't have a high up-front entry cost, they'd inevitably end up with
lots of pranksters 'trying out' the service with ludicrous/dumb requests
("make my wife love me again"; "buy twenty pizzas, then hurl them into the
ocean at this exact point") and bogging things down.

~~~
bredren
Sure, but can't this reasonably be handled with a $100 or even $150 option?
I've never dumped a grand into trying out a 'crazy internet thing.' i.e. uber
or airbnb.

Since it is $1000, it is hard to not see this as anything but something for
the very wealthy. Which may be fine, but the info page doesn't make it sound
like it is for that sort of folk.

------
xirdstl
The examples are puzzling to me. Take this one: "I’m out of the office today.
Check my email and let me know if there’s anything urgent."

Are they proposing we should be ok with giving them our credentials?

~~~
cmikec
Many of our users give us access to various aspects of their personal and work
lives in order to gain the benefit of efficiency and saved time. We also set
up users who don't want to share their primary email with email addresses at
our domain.

~~~
davecraige
Yea, I gave Magic access to setup recurring donations to two charities I
support.

Unfortunately they closed my account and stopped the donations. They provided
no information on when the last donations went out so I could resume them.

They went completely dark.

------
captaindiego
It says it works from anywhere, but then only gives a number that works from
within the US. How are you supposed to use this service while in another
country and not having access to a US sim card?

~~~
MagnumOpus
If you are in the target group that is willing to pay $100/hour for a virtual
assistant at the beck and call of an SMS, then the $0.20 or so for the SMS
roaming charges seems like small change...

~~~
biot
Assuming they have a +1 ... internationally available SMS number. 5 digit
shortcodes aren't guaranteed to work globally.

------
pazimzadeh
Episode 5 of Rick and Morty's first season is relevant (the Mister Meeseeks
episode).

~~~
mikeash
So, don't ask them to take two strokes off my golf game?

------
kilroy123
$100 an hour? Fuck that.

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.

~~~
jamifsud
From where did you hire?

~~~
kilroy123
From upwork.com.

------
pmichaud
I'm deeply skeptical of this. It would be worth $100/hr to hand off highly
complex task like planning a wedding (from their copy), but it's impossible--
there is way too much interaction and iteration necessary on tasks like that.

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.

------
hackuser
I would love to see more comments that provided value to other readers. There
is so much expertise and intelligence in this forum, but so many discussions
contain only what is easiest: obvious cyncism. It's kind of fun banter once in
a while, but gets old and isn't worth spending the time reading.

~~~
pjc50
This is Hacker News; it's a better, more informed, hand-crafted artisinal
cynicism that we come here for.

~~~
ph0rque
Although, if you don't have time to be cynical, you can always use magic+ to
obtain the ultimate super-human cynicism!

------
voltagex_
I said to myself that I'd start less HN comments this year with "I'm in a
wheelchair and..." but:

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.

------
stephenc_c_
So this is just Amex Plat/Centurion concierge for people who prefer to text
than call?

~~~
peteretep
Have you tried Amex Platinum concierge? If they can deliver, this looks better
in practice.

~~~
modoc
FWIW I've been very impressed by what the Amex Plat concierge can do

~~~
gcr
Do you have any fun examples?

------
negamax
If you can establish a business around this, that would be great. But personal
assistants are more than just money and skills. There's lots of trust involved
created over the years. I think people would be more comfortable if this was
completely AIed (may be it can be promoted as that in a sly way) as compared
to sending task requests to unknown (although trained) people. But that's just
me. I really do think that this is bad example of technology. But looking at
the examples, it may just be the thing nouveau riche are looking for.

------
Aoyagi
>SHARING OF YOUR INFORMATION

>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...

~~~
pjc50
If they log in as you to a third-party website (e.g. so they can change your
calendar as in one of the examples), that information could be used by the
third party to serve you targeted ads.

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.

~~~
Aoyagi
That's one way to interpret it, no doubt. But as I said, the vagueness is a
part of the problem (as I see it anyway).

------
OliverJones
Sorry for the snark, but...

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."

------
bambax
> _Get you reservations at places that nobody else can_

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...?

------
omarish
Based on everything I learned about this space from starting, operating, and
later selling a company that does exactly this in the summer of 2014 [1] [2],
I'm bullish on this idea. I think it's definitely a step in the right
direction and incentives are starting to line up.

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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351)

[2] [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/my-
disruptive-d...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/my-disruptive-
deputy.html)

~~~
fady
crazy. my family also lived in lebanon(zahle), and they had two maids, a
driver, and a lady to come to the house and roll grape leaves for them but
they still had to get their water delivered, which did cost a lot. they were
not rich by american standards at all.

good thoughts..would be great to get these services on the cheap out here.
Lyft of grape leaves rolling? ha.

~~~
omarish
Haha, Wara2 3in-App.

------
arihant
The $100/hr price point would make if and only if they are able to accomplish
tasks that cannot be accomplished by a single hired assistant.

"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.

~~~
davecraige
This is exactly the same question I asked them yesterday:
[https://twitter.com/davecraige/status/684429034676092928](https://twitter.com/davecraige/status/684429034676092928)

They haven't responded yet.

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

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

------
biot
Show HN: I asked Magic+ to build me a Magic+ clone (getyourmagic.io)

With their promise of "Anything you want. Seriously." how long before we see
that? :)

------
pbreit
$100 an hour sounds expensive. $1/minute might be a better published price.
And also suggest that it's priced in minute increments.

~~~
cmikec
Thanks for the feedback. You're right, you bring up a good point that isn't
explained as much on the website as it could be. We actually track time down
to the second and display really detailed reports to users every day about how
the time was utilized. Quite often a simple request can end up being $3-$4.

~~~
pbreit
To-the-second metering sounds awful.

~~~
FireBeyond
The interview for the Magicians ensures they don't stutter - or does it?

------
Rauchg
I use Magic occasionally and it's been wonderful every time. It's definitely
not something I would use everyday, but it's been great for: \- a time I
needed a replacement power supply cable, and really didn't have the time to
research where to get it, and needed it urgently. \- a couple times where I
needed a dinner reservation for relatives or friends visiting \- quick
questions about things to do or places to go

I definitely recommend the basic version!

------
relaxatorium
The example they're trying to use to show you that prices _aren 't_ crazy
quotes a $30+ surcharge for having groceries delivered.

~~~
TranquilMarmot
I really loved the $3,750 helicopter ride to the airport, like your average
joe has that much money to blow so they don't have to sit in traffic. I guess
I'm just not in their target demographic?

~~~
gcr
I like that copy. It signals who they expect their customers to be.

------
verytrivial
[ Hi, Magic+. I need a bunch of highly rated comments on a Hacker News story.
]

    
    
        [ No problem. ]

------
snydly
So wait... did I miss the part about what happens if they fail to do what I
ask? What happens then?

"Finish my dissertation. Thanks."

~~~
sampo
> _" 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...](https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/11/ed-dante/the-shadow-scholar-the-
man-who-writes-your-students-papers-tells-his-story/)

------
slmyers
The landing page seems like a joke or a scam. I was honestly confused as to
whether this was a legitimate service.

------
jaksmit
I tweeted about this last week and was surprised no one else noticed sooner:
[https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F_...](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F_jacksmith%2Fstatus%2F682749923410874368&h=5AQHmARzS)

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](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](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](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...](http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/04/magic-to-start-
charging-100-an-hour-for-sms-based-delivery-service-that-was-previously-free/)

~~~
Pharaoh2
Ahh, the people who can't read. It says magic+ is paid, magic is free.

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.

~~~
mpeg
Neither of them are free, magic+ is hourly with minimum commitments and magic
is pay per request, with free consultation before you get a quote.

~~~
mikeash
The screenshot says "free to chat," which Magic is.

~~~
mpeg
Yeah, free to chat, not free if you want to actually use the service.

It's the same as getting a quote from any other professional service (lawyers,
doctors, etc.) which is generally free.

~~~
mikeash
Sure. Just saying, the screenshot isn't misleading in that respect.

------
Pitarou
If I understand correctly, all it takes is a few text messages from your
client for you to incur huge bills on their behalf.

I presume you're aware that text messages are easy to fake.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_spoofing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_spoofing))
What controls do you have in place to prevent fraud?

------
hackuser
I'd love to know how they manage to scale such high quality service. They say
they use "top-tier executive assistants and concierges", but it's hard to
scale high-quality employees.

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?

~~~
davecraige
I think that is misleading.

I believe the employees are only paid $15 an hour.

------
ageofwant
I'm wondering if this trend to pay for limited use, or "human micro-services"
is good for society. Soon I'll have to bid for work as a developer and will
have no idea if I'll be able to eat today or sleep under a roof. God help me
if I'm sick.

Progress and efficiency is great, but I wonder if we (you and I, common devs)
are digging our own graves.

------
HorizonXP
So I haven't used Magic in a while. I'll probably start using it again now.

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.

------
S4M
> Q: What about the purchases that I make through Magic+?

> 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.

~~~
ethbro
Granted, but they're also making $100/hr to fulfill your request. Sure, people
are greedy, but I feel like you could staff some pretty honest, capable, and
reliable dispatchers at $33/hr (using a standard 3x billing vs salary
multiplier).

------
1812Overture
"Magic+! I need the schematics of this building sent to my phone. And hack a
satellite with infrared imaging so I can see where the terrorists are." \-
Jack Bauer

------
w1ntermute
Isn't this just an overpriced Zirtual?

[https://www.zirtual.com/plans-pricing](https://www.zirtual.com/plans-pricing)

~~~
pdq
Right, this is text-message-only Zirtual, at $100/hour. They also include the
standard Magic physical services as well, but I don't see why you'd pay for
physical at $100/hour plus the Magic surcharge, when you can use Magic alone
or Zirtual alone.

------
bambax
> _Where is Magic+ available? Anywhere you need it. Magic+ is there to make
> your every desire and need happen, wherever you are._

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?

------
davecraige
A few thoughts and questions

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?

------
eka808
And how can we guarantee that people behind magic+ don't get any conflict of
interest ?

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...

~~~
mbroshi
Presumably they make their money from repeat customers, in which case ripping
off their customers is probably not an optimal strategy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeated_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeated_game)

------
cballard
Is this a parody?

~~~
arcatek
No, Magic has already been discussed before[1]. It seems they are moving from
a percentage pricing (Magic) to a per-time pricing (Magic+).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819)

~~~
cballard
Ah, the copy ("Magician", somehow they're going to conjure up Tina Fey for
$100?) made me think it was a joke.

~~~
cthalupa
It's probably not that difficult to actually facilitate meeting Tina Fey.
There are agencies that handle celebrity appearances, and many celebrities
will do appearances for a fee.

It's expensive, but not particularly outlandishly difficult.

------
rodionos
Some of the comments posted here make me wonder about how broad and diverse
the HN reader base is. The demographics are just unbelievable, if not
surprising.

------
cyrillevincey
We've been seeing personal concierge remote services pop up (and usually die)
every year for the past 15y. What's new here?

------
mastazi
Are you guys able to read comfortably those tiny SMS screenshots? I was hoping
I could click and zoom but nope...

------
ejhong
Are you going to support bitcoin for Magic+? Currently looks like you need a
credit card to register.

~~~
cmikec
Bitcoin was nowhere near as popular of a payment option for Magic as some
people expected it to be. For simplicity's sake, we did not include it right
now in the Magic+ service. If you would like to use Magic+ via Bitcoin, please
text in and mention that fact, and we will certainly accommodate.

------
lancewiggs
$100 per hour, or $800 per day or $160k/year at 200 working days after
holidays and weekends. That's arguably close to what the wealthy people who
this is currently targeted at should pay a great assistant anyway.

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.

------
dinkumthinkum
It seems like an interesting way to fiendishly separate foolish people from
their money.

------
option_greek
There is so much on envy (masked as cynicism) in the comment section that we
might as well paint the HN banner green today.

PS: Before you downvote me to death, want to clarify that the envy is that
someone can use this service paying 100/hr :)

------
jimmytucson
What are the most significant improvements to this service since it launched
on HN almost a year ago?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819)

------
kriro
I'd be interested in seeing what failed requests look like. Can't really
promise to solve everything so I'd like to know what mitigation strategies
etc. are used when no acceptable solution can be found.

------
billiam
Looks to me like someone read this undergraduate econ lesson from earlier
today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839116)

------
kdamken
The service is $100 an hour, which is bananas, but I guess that's not too
surprising when their target customer is someone who casually buys two iPad
pros like a normal person buys packs of gum.

------
patkai
Interesting discussion, but I would postulate that people on HN are typically
the ones who wouldn't appreciate - or even understand - such a service. Also,
if you are fixated on the details, e.g. "do I need this to reserve a flight
today" then you will certainly not get it. You could alternatively think about
the big picture, i.e. removing all the limitations and bottlenecks of a
personal assistant, and also scaling it up.

------
petke
I thought this was about
[http://www.imagemagick.org/Magick++/](http://www.imagemagick.org/Magick++/)

------
gbersac
What if I ask magic+ to find me a competitor as effective as magic+ but for
free (or lower price) ? Or to offer me free services ? Haha, I caught you !!!

~~~
tempestn
They said they'll do anything if it's "legal and _possible_ ".

------
smegel
Out of my world, but I could see why the super-rich might like something like
this. But I guess they have their own personal assistants for this stuff
anyway.

~~~
peteretep
I'm far from super rich, but I make a small multiple of most senior dev
salaries, and I could see this being useful

~~~
rootedbox
If you make 3x of senior dev salary in the SF then you are in the 1%. So i'd
probably consider you super rich.

~~~
peteretep
$400k household income puts someone in the US top 1%. I don't think that fits
any common definition of super-rich in the US.

~~~
duderific
I'd say that depends what part of the US you're in.

------
gcr
"I need the following hash reversed: abcd...."

~~~
fitzwatermellow
From the F.A.Q:

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!

------
hysan
> Q: How quickly will I get what I want after requesting it?

> 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.

------
tedmiston
> Q: How much does it cost?

> 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.

~~~
FireBeyond
Not so much. You need to either buy a block of 10 hours for $1,000, or sign up
to a $3K/mo subscription, as your minimum entry point.

------
ommunist
Isn't it dangerous to entrust the whole pattern of your habits and spending to
anonymous organisation?

------
eruannon
Wow, these guys are desperate for a pivot after getting torpedoed by Facebook
M, huh?

------
lectrick
For what it's worth, I've used the service twice and it worked out great.
People tend to complain more than praise (there must be some psychological
concept to explain this...), so that's my two cents.

------
uhtred
This crap makes my socialist leaning side come out. Another unnecessary
service that no-one needs, yet people with too much money will probably use.
Where's Karl Pilkington's Bullshit Man when you need him.

------
morgangiraud
What if i ask magic+ to ask magic+ for a time consuming task. Since i'm not
asking magic+ myself anymore, should i pay anything apart the 2 minutes it
took to ask magic+ from the inside?

------
whalesalad
The examples are a little outlandish. Maybe some more realistic ones?

------
gowthamgts12
I'm having a negative feeling about HackerNews now.

------
jayzalowitz
I recently thought of a better way to do this with a quasi supervised ML
approach... I think this pricepoint is finally a good reason to do so.

------
Animats
This, of course, comes from Heinlein's "We Also Walk Dogs". Does Magic+ have
anyone as good as Grace Cormet?

------
roarkjs
Hey magic, can we get a UK version of magic?

------
archimedespi
Really, really freaky. Especially all the copy about how _" you can trust
us"_.

~~~
ethbro
How is this that different that Google Now? Except there are actually people
(at least some of the time) at the other end, rather than massive amounts of
logged data and code?

~~~
BookmarkSaver
...because you are paying them? Quite a bit? If you are paying $100/hr for
something, it is probably pretty important. I really don't see the comparison
to Google Now at all.

~~~
ethbro
My comment was in reply to the original "you can trust us" bent. Money paid is
kind of immaterial to trust.

Well, other than as an inversely related quantity. I'd probably be more likely
to trust someone I was paying $100/hr.

------
mbparsa
Can magic get me a permit to stay in the state? a green card?

------
free2rhyme214
Why Magic+ instead of Operator?

~~~
FireBeyond
Because Operator is Dave Morin's "one of a kind, custom, bespoke" app he had
built for his PA...

[http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/46539276780/...](http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/46539276780/a-cunt-
and-his-iphone)

~~~
flylib
he is talking about Garrett Camp's (Expa) Operator
[https://operator.com](https://operator.com)

------
sauere
What is it with all the comments about the service being for "elitist" or the
"1%"?

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.

------
aresant
First, did anybody else miss that what's linked here is the "+" version, at
$100/hr?

The original "pay per use" service is still offered at
[https://getmagicnow.com/](https://getmagicnow.com/)

------
mdevere
This honestly looks awesome and easily worth the money.

~~~
mdevere
And the proposition makes way way way more sense than the vanilla Magic.

~~~
mdevere
And, might I add, that this business appears to be a net job creator... jobs
funded by the 1%.

------
allisonburtch
magic*, exploiting labor so you don't have to!

------
irascible
Seeing this makes me feel ashamed to be a part of the tech industry. This is
why people despise the 1%. Show some taste/humility/discretion. A "service"
like this is so narrowly focused on the ultra rich, that it should be
marketing in high end magazines/direct outreach.. not on hacker news.

~~~
theli0nheart
I completely disagree. This service targets people who peg a higher value to
their time than $100 / hour and/or are too busy to take on other tasks. This
is valuable for anyone that runs their own business or who has an actual
dollar amount pegged to their time (a large portion of HN readership), not
just members of the 1%.

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.

~~~
npizzolato
Someone who values their time at $100/hour, working 40 hours/week, is making
over $200,000 a year. I'm not sure if that technically qualifies as the 1%,
but I think it's close enough to the GP's point.

~~~
theli0nheart
I don't know if you've ever been self-employed, but billing out 40 hours per
week is _very_ hard. $100 / hour can afford you a middle-class lifestyle
(assuming 25-30 hours per week AND fully employed, more realistically you can
fill 70-80% of your time).

$100 * 26 * 40 ⇒ $104k ⇒ and then slice off the employer portion for FICA and
SS and you're looking at a pretty modest figure.

------
PaulHoule
It reminds me of the old Heinlein story "We also walk dogs."

The $100/hr rate bugs me a little. Some people's time is worth more than that
and other is less.

------
rbnacharya
This was what I had in my head 10 hrs ago.

------
mizzao
Magic+ isn't going to be able to satisfy _all_ of the copycat requests to meet
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler...

------
pavanlimo
The fact that "tech" behind this is totally transparent is its strength and
not a weakness.

------
soared
Based on their web design I doubt their ability to complete any simple task.

~~~
lectrick
I'm a fairly highly-paid web dev and I don't have a curated personal website.
Shocking, I know. I'd just rather spend time on other things, like paying work

~~~
soared
Your personal site is irrelevant. A business that is public facing should have
a good website, and theirs simply is not designed well. If you can spend $x
building this service you can spend .01x on your website.

~~~
fractallyte
I'm genuinely curious: what's wrong with their website?

There's a logo, one-sentence explanation (with further details beneath),
examples, FAQ, and footer. So the _content_ is all there. Furthermore, it's
minimal-looking, and minimally coded, and all on a single responsive page.

Isn't this the ideal for a modern website that's also expected to work on
mobile devices?

------
aestetix
"Magic, here is a list of social security numbers for people I do not like.
Can you share them with scam artists?"

"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...

~~~
fastball
First one sounds vaguely illegal. Second one sounds illegal without wife's
permission, otherwise I'm sure they would do it. Last one I'm sure someone
could figure out.

------
such_a_casual
> Our unique combination of humans and software

Oh god, I can't stop laughing.

------
voynich61
FUCK CAPITALISM GODDAMN

------
known
Sounds interesting.

------
sergiotapia
This sounds utterly insane, yet so amazing.

“Find someone to train me like Jason Bourne.” Hahaha.

------
shaftway
Really tempted to make an account just to request some inane stuff.

