
Jarvis: Personal assistant via SMS - filleokus
https://jarv.co
======
lazzlazzlazz
I can't conceive of who would sign up for this given how little information
there is on the site. I can't even find the pricing. The FAQ is short, vague,
and even feels deceptive (re: "futuristic tech").

Where is the legal? Where are the examples, demonstrations, etc.? No, no, no.

~~~
lukeholder
This is a result of the whole lean movement. Validate your idea with customer
feedback before you spend a bunch of money. Yes it means things will be a
little smoke and mirrors to begin with but that doesn't mean the founders are
not capable of delivering what is being proposed.

They may have thought through all of your questions but decided not to have
firm answers right now in order to validate the idea, and not the technology.

~~~
avalaunch
And therein lies the problem with the whole lean movement. You can never truly
invalidate an idea. You can only invalidate your 'lean' implementation of an
idea which may or may not have been the actual minimal viable product. It's
quite possible the implementation you executed is too minimal. In this case, I
think that's exactly the case. The founders have an interesting idea that
would appeal to a good chunk of HN readers but we're all put off by just how
minimal the implementation is. Unless the founders are reading this thread,
they'd easily be duped into believing they invalidated their idea based on
their low conversion rate.

~~~
ryanSrich
This isn't really the lean process though. Lean implies you've done proper
research _prior_ to releasing a product. If people are umcomfortable with
signing up then this isn't an MVP and not indicative of how the lean process
works.

~~~
avalaunch
My point is that no matter what you do, you will never be able to invalidate
an idea. All you can ever do is invalidate one exact execution of the idea.
Perhaps your idea is great but you left out the one killer feature. Or perhaps
it's feature perfect but the design is just not right. Or perhaps the
implementation is perfect but you didn't market it correctly. Research done
prior to launch can certainly be helpful but still doesn't change the fact
that you cannot invalidate an idea.

The problem I have with the lean startup movement is how easily it is to get
derailed before you ever even begin. For example, the lean startup movement
suggests an initial qualitative approach to testing your assumptions, achieved
by talking to a small number of people in your target market. But that assumes
you know who your target market will be, that you know who the early adopters
in that market will be, and that you're asking the right questions. If you get
any of those wrong, poof! You'll believe your assumption wrong and your idea
invalidated even those it hasn't been.

The founders of Jarvis may have done their homework prior to releasing a
product. They may have concluded that there was a real pain point that their
service could solve. But what research should they have done to realize that
their target market wouldn't be interested unless they had a legal page? Or
demonstrations? The problem with trying to go with the absolute MVP is that
it's way too easy to go too minimal.

The lean startup methodology will work best for ideas that solve massive pain
points. With a massive pain point, it won't matter if you're talking to
someone that is normally an early adopter or someone that normally trails
behind. It won't matter if you have a poor design, a minimal feature set, and
no legal page. But for anything else, it's just entirely too easy for your
target market to dismiss you and for you to summarily dismiss your idea.

~~~
unclebucknasty
I've often thought the same. Execution is the hard part, especially with
regard to conversions. It is really tough to get right, even with a mature
product. And, given the sea of noise that invades everyone's lives, trying to
be heard with a product presentation that is purposely subpar seems
unrealistic.

So, one problem with lean is that you're actually testing two variables: the
idea and the execution. When people don't convert, is it the idea, the copy,
the design, something else? It may be that you just need to iterate on your
copy/conversion funnel, etc. a dozen times. But, lean de-emphasizes the
implementation; encouraging you to instead view the feedback as primarily
relevant to your idea, and so move on in the face of low conversions.

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fergusom11865
Tried it. After 3 requests, all of which would have taken less than the
prescribed 15 minutes, was told it wasn't the right service for me. Great
idea, poor execution on MVP unfortunately.

~~~
pygy_
What was the nature of your requests?

~~~
fergusom11865
1\. Reorder stuff for me on instacart (would have taken 2 minutes), 2. Lookup
a URL for me, 3. Lookup 10 quotes. Last one could be called "iffy," but this
was after texting them asking for parameters to which they responded "as long
as it's legal, we're in beta now so anything goes." (paraphrase) Again, not
here to trash these guys / gals, but...

~~~
ugoano
Pretty bold - were those listed amongst that Jarvis' abilities? My assistant
(Cyman Digital Butler) has a list of example commands you can try, gives an
idea of the abilities Cyman has. So you could say "open the ... website" to
get the url for example. Although we've got a great community to help, we're
in the middle of creating a wiki. Perhaps the Jarvis you're using needs a wiki
too.

~~~
TallGuyShort
"Pretty much anything a personal assistant can do." "Jarvis is a tech enabled
person." I would assume from this that all those tasks were possible for a
human personal assisstant.

~~~
ugoano
Very true. Far be it for me to defend the competition, they probably are still
teaching it certain phrasings. My Cyman assistant is pretty good at
understanding a variety of phrases, but I'm still teaching him.

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omni
There's no way I'm giving you my personal info without knowing what your
pricing structure looks like. It's in the HN title, but it's not on the site.

~~~
dang
> It's in the HN title, but it's not on the site

We took it out of the title for that reason.

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billmalarky
"Meet Jarvis, Your Personal Assistant Who Never Sleeps"

Then when I click on Live chat:

"We're not around, but we'd love to chat another time."

Well that's a bit concerning.

~~~
staunch
Hey - even Jarvis needs a Jarvis!

~~~
angersock
It's Jarvis's all the way down... D:

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cfontes
I like the idea. Don't know if I would use it but I like it.

That auto carousel is annoying like hell.

~~~
rschuetzler
Definitely agree with the auto carousel. Not a fan of things disappearing when
I'm halfway through reading them.

~~~
Kayou
Oh god, I tried to read the screenshots to have an idea of what is the service
like, but I gave up after the second time being interrupted by the carousel.
Terrible.

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filmgirlcw
See, I need to hire a personal assistant to deal with email, but I'm afraid of
doing the remote PA thing because I don't trust them with my email (and that's
a whole other issue since that's the job I need help with) and this idea is
appealing, except, as others have noted, I have no idea who this company is.
What their business model is. How they make sure my personal details and
payment stuff is secure. That this won't just wind up being an easy way to
phish into my life.

Nope.

------
rtpg
What's the difference between this and Fancy
Hands([https://www.fancyhands.com/](https://www.fancyhands.com/))?

~~~
jdotjdot
The two key differences for me:

(1) FancyHands, having been around a lot longer, has far better execution and
delivery. Email, phone, an app, recording through the app--many ways to give a
task assignment. I usually don't want to text them, I forward them emails to
take action upon or simply leave a voice message.

(2) Jarvis is unlimited tasks. THAT is a big one for me. If there ever were a
service that were at or somewhat approaching FancyHands quality with unlimited
tasks, I'd be on it in a heartbeat. For the time being, I've been using Visa
Signature Concierge for tasks that don't require a FancyHands level of
attention paid to them, since they are unlimited and free if you have a Visa
Signature card.

~~~
morgante
> For the time being, I've been using Visa Signature Concierge for tasks

Could you explain that a bit more? I have a couple Visa Signature cards, but
always thought the Concierge service must be some sort of scam or ripoff. What
are some examples of things you've gotten them to do? (When making purchases,
do they charge a premium/commission?)

~~~
jdotjdot
It's definitely not a scam or ripoff, they cost nothing and I use them
frequently. I have never actually purchased anything through them, so I don't
think they charge a commission, though I can't be sure--as I understand it,
they just make money by having you use your Visa card for the purchase. In
this article[1] they tried to take it to an extreme, but frankly most of those
tasks would be better for Fancy Hands.

Since I also have Fancy Hands and FH is better quality, I use Visa for tasks
that are low priority, or I can afford to have redone a couple of times, or
are very simple. Good examples of these include: not immediate restaurant
reservations, basic research of all kind (anything from 'find me a place in
NYC that sells Petrus Aged Pale Ale in bulk' to 'get me a list of all the
language classes that NYU has for non-students with dates, times, location,
and price' to 'how do I mail a letter to Spain'). Mostly generic things. Fancy
Hands is what I use for specific, personal, or high-touch items--"Cancel my
AT&T account," "Get PayPal on the phone again and again until they fix my
account," "Please call this number in the UK during their morning and get this
information so I don't have to stay up late," etc.

[1]: [http://fourhourworkweek.com/2010/05/01/credit-card-
concierge...](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2010/05/01/credit-card-concierge/)

------
jimsilverman
unless i'm missing something, the idea is to hand over all of your personal
information to two college kids with internet access?

~~~
JTon
Said college educated. First glance I thought the same thing too

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ch4s3
>artificial intelligence and futuristic tech.

That basically broke my BS alarm.

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janbro
Hey, I was working on a project similar to that a while ago that interfaced
with google voice! However Google voices api was deprecated and my project
never really got any further. Here's a link to the git hub repo
[https://github.com/janbro/J.A.R.V.I.S](https://github.com/janbro/J.A.R.V.I.S)

Edit: Scratch that, my project was nothing like their's, my JARVIS was meant
to be a fully autonomous sms personal assistant. Apparently this is a service
which assigns you two human people you text for things who are "aided" by
artificial intelligence and futuristic tech, whatever that implies. Their FAQ
page says a bit more about the service, although not enough for me to want to
subscribe to it

~~~
summitsummit
Are you aware of any other services that can be used to integrate a bot with
real time text message communications?

~~~
ugoano
Yep, check out the Cyman Digital Butler for Android. With the paid version,
when you get an incoming text you can set it so he reads out who sent it, then
you can say "read message", or "reply" and then your reply. You can also
initiate messages, and there are helpful features to help with complex names.
Like if you said "my wife is called ...". You could then later say "send a
text to my wife". I worked pretty hard on it!

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CraigJPerry
Grrr this isn't Jarvis.

I've been running Sphinx-pocket (speech recognition engine) on an old pentium4
PC in my garage. That's a way better approximation of Jarvis, even if I do say
so myself...

Actually if anyone knows of a way to lookout for the word Jarvis without
hogging the CPU...? The current setup uses a button (connected to an arduino
running firmata to give the old PC some gpio pins) which is monitored by a
daemon and triggers sphinx on a debounced button-up event.

I'd like some low CPU way to find potential candidate input from the mic that
sounds like it could be an instruction worth passing to sphinx?

~~~
xahrepap
There was a project I saw on HN that did that using an RPI. I think this might
be it: [http://www.raspberrypi.org/meet-jasper-open-source-voice-
com...](http://www.raspberrypi.org/meet-jasper-open-source-voice-computing/)

It's all open source, so hopefully you can find what you're looking for.

~~~
CraigJPerry
Great find. They're using pocket sphinx as well I see.

Their mic module listens for 1 second, establishes a threshold volume, then
for the next 9 seconds it listens for a disturbance above a weighted
threshold. They're sampling at a reasonably high rate.

Either way I'm going to try their code and see the performance. The approach
should be faster than mine but I didn't see how they handle the edge case of a
command coming in over the 10 sec boundary when it restarts listening.

------
scottkrager
Interesting. How can this truly be unlimited (albeit 15 minute) tasks?

~~~
brownbat
Jarvis, spend 14 minutes coding this project. And take good notes, I may need
you on this again later.

------
cheese1756
Small typo on step 2 of the signup:

"We collect your card now though, in case you want us to purchase things
durring the trial." (should be "during" instead of "durring")

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toufan
I signed up last night. I figure that , I signed up. Haven't been thrilled
with service yet. I asked them to set up some calendar appointments with my
team and I already set up all permissions, etc... 14 hours later, no
appointments on calendar.

They definitely need more information on their site and some thinking through
process, etc.

To be fair, I'm guessing they got inundated after this went up on YC/TC. And
the service looks promising. Here's hoping to some smooth sailing

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taitems
Makes me wish Flow Concierge was never discontinued.

[http://www.getflow.com/blog/2012/05/introducing-flow-
concier...](http://www.getflow.com/blog/2012/05/introducing-flow-concierge/)

------
sim_guigue
I'd be interested to know what's their business model for the months to come.
like is it even scalable? but I _love_ the idea of disrupting the realm of
personal secretary.

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nwh
Wonder how they're interfacing with iMessage. As far as I know the binaries
are heavily obfuscated and have no public interfaces.

I'm guessing the name is based on Jeeves?

~~~
swang
Jarvis is Iron Man/Tony Stark's computer assistant in the movies.

~~~
nwh
That's embarrassing, I know characters from books in the 1800s but not movies
in the last decade.

~~~
umrashrf
like who from the books?

~~~
nwh
Well, Jeeves. The gentleman's personal gentleman.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeeves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeeves)

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umrashrf
Recently I was developing this kind of application on Android for my personal
needs because 3G is recently launched in Pakistan and it is not affordable
yet.

~~~
umrashrf
Not sure why was this down voted. I will clarify. By Android application I
mean, a server side application which listen for incoming texts and respond to
them via text msgs.

~~~
summitsummit
I use GVoice but it's rather limited. What do you use server side to listen to
and respond to text messages?

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nirvanatikku
I can't seem to validate '100$/month'. Do I have to sign up in order to see
that info?

~~~
smeyer
It shows up (with $99/month) after giving a name/email/phone number but before
giving credit card info or completing sign-up.

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zcase
Can someone tell us what kind of "artificial intelligence and futuristic tech"
these guys have?

~~~
daniel-cussen
People. From the bottom of the page:

>Light Speed, Meet Human Intelligence // College-Educated & US-Based

It's college-educated people based in US answering SMS questions around the
clock. No fancy-fancy, or even fancy of any sort.

~~~
ch4s3
Correction, 2 college educated people with laptops and access to google.

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ratsimihah
Jarvis is not a human being. Can we save that name for when true general AI
comes up? : /

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someotheracct
I actually find this super brilliant, however, a nitpick -->

'college educated - in the us' <\-- that's all this kids can get is some
bullshit VA job that pays dick/hr? lmfao "higher education" \- what a scam
'college' is

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avi_
Hi, we do UNLIMITED business tasks @ $69/month for entrepreneurs, managers,
administrators & back office staff. :)
[https://www.timesvr.com/faqs](https://www.timesvr.com/faqs)

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allanmacgregor
Funny, I been working on a very similar concept

~~~
summitsummit
As have I. Mine works with Google Voice. How do you integrate your bot with
text messages?

~~~
pests
I've always used [http://www.twilio.com/](http://www.twilio.com/)

