7 ms·

>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 t

by rtpg 11y ago

>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"

meowface 11y ago
It's an interesting idea, but I agree, I don't see how it's a tech company in any way.
- themartorana 11y ago
  This is weird to me. It may not be pushing the bar forward on AI or NLP, but it uses one of the most commonly used interpersonal communications technologies today to put a human experience in front of a seemingly boundless personal assistant. Look, it may not be Tesla, but there are a couple of unicorns that seem tech savvy now, that weren't so much for the first little while. AirBnB comes to mind - their analytics now are probably amazing, but they started as a website with a database. Doesn't make them any less of a technology company. Leveraging technology to break down barriers (immediate, constant, on-demand availability and scalability of a personal assistant) is a technology solution to a problem.
  - meowface 11y ago
    It's still not really a tech company, though. Maybe you could call it a "remote company" or "virtual company" due to how they operate, but in my opinion, you can't really call yourself a technology company if you haven't programmed or engineered some sort of software or hardware.
iLoch 11y ago
AI is the obvious future for this yeah. I think the tech right now probably just centralizes around building really good customer profiles and excellent tools for assistants so that any assistant can pick up work for any customer.
seanlinehan 11y ago
You don't have to automate the parsing of queries to produce leverage here. Every time they answer a query successfully, I would imagine they add that to an internal repository of information. So the technology play would be less on the "figure out what they want" front and more on the "deliver exactly what they want" front. Need an on demand helicopter in NYC? Great, Magic knows just who to call for that because they already did it for Justin Kan. Need to rent the Exploratorium? Great, they can do that too. For more common requests that fit neatly into other on-demand services offering, they could ostensibly partner directly with those folks and integrate with them. That way, Magic could have their own master dashboard to purchase services with minimal effort.
- rtpg 11y ago
  that isn't technology though, you just might use technology to keep track of it (wiki/whatever). Maybe that's what paul meant by "technology" but that isn't a Tesla play by any stretch of the imagination.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    Shaving 5 or 10s off average handle time with smarter tooling is absolutely technology. In fact, it's probably the most widely used technology on the planet. As someone who works in that space, helping people do similar things with greater accurately and quickness delivers a surprising amount of value... when you're talking about deploying that across 250+ desks. The target isn't to throw technology at 99% of all requests, but to deploy it on the smaller portion of the process it's suited to. The only thing faster than 100% machine is 99% machine + 1% human.
  - argonaut 11y ago
    An internal logistics dashboard and automation pipeline is absolutely technology, and it's absolutely a competitive advantage.
jfoutz 11y ago
People are fairly predictable. Presumably they'll build software to handle common requests quickly. Google pizza is a good example, but i doubt google will do pizza, dry cleaning, and travel booking all in one shot. (but they might). It seems like these folks can find a local vendor for service X, have a button on some internal software to send it out, then just leverage that for all customers in that city. presumably the oddball requests get tracked similarly. "i want an elephant" might take a while the first time, but the software should remember contacts and whatnot to make it easy if they ever get the same request.
- simoncion 11y ago
  > Presumably they'll build software to handle common requests quickly. I'm not the OP, but... I guess, but again, where's the software? You can entirely reasonably solve that problem with a well-indexed medium-sized binder and a Rolodex.
  - bonobo3000 11y ago
    It might not be necessary but it does help scale cheaply. You could have people pick up the phone and order food for you when requested, but if they can route that through an API 99% of the time it costs a whole lot less time & money.
  - eitally 11y ago
    There are a lot of simple questions that are hard to find answers for if you don't know where to look, and those answers are often unique or only marginally repeatable. Take travel assistance, for example. If all you need to do are basic pre-travel concierge tasks, that's one thing, but what happens when your client tells you something like "I'm going to be driving from Denver to Salina, Kansas today with two young children in the car. I need several energy-releasing entertainment options along the route, as well as a family friendly hotel room in KC that's near the stadium and offers onsite guest laundry (machines, not full service)." None of this is hard, but it requires multiple web searches, probably a few phone calls, and hopefully some local expertise. Once an adequate database is compiled, software can help quickly retrieve viable options and minimize human intervention. Human curation will still be absolutely mandatory and expected in a service with this cost. Note: I just drove from San Jose to Raleigh with two young kids, including a day from Salina, KS to St Louis. We found the most amazing place to stop, and I highly recommend it to anyone driving E-W or W-E on I70. The Moon Marble Company (https://www.moonmarble.com/ https://www.moonmarble.com/) is not just a handmade marble shop. It has the best collection of retro toys I've seen anywhere in my life. We spent 3 hours browsing!
tedmiston 11y ago
> One possibility would be through AI... Excuse me if this is a bit naive, but I've always had the impression the whole point of Magic is to build the AI side. Maybe not communicating back to the user... perhaps that part's always done by a human, but a human with machine-aided decision making. I would love to see the internal interface that Magic's personal assistants are using today. Doing every task by hand with people probably doesn't scale. Maybe for $100/hr it does, but that could just be their way of targeting tasks for executives because they have a higher percentage of profit. I expect they're using the data from requests today as training to recognize narrow patterns to be automated tomorrow. Edit: I found this in their FAQ. > Q: Do you use AI to fulfill my requests? > Magic+ is fulfilled through a combination of top-tier executive assistants and concierges, paired with intelligent software. Our unique combination of humans and software is what enables us to consistently deliver an unparalleled level of service.
cmikec 11y ago
We are highly focused on software that automates and/or makes parts of Magic and Magic+ more efficient. Most of the founding team are engineers, including myself. At this time we can't say much about our specific technical approach, other than that it is a very difficult problem, we have a novel approach, and we are making progress.
toddmorey 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - georgespencer 11y ago
    That's exactly the reason I'd use a service like Magic. Finding stuff on Amazon takes dozens of clicks.
  - pricechild 11y ago
    > 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 11y ago
      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.
pnwhyc 11y ago
You're looking at AI as if it would be their primary product. They don't need to compete with Google or Apple on the front of AI as a polished product. Not now, anyways. All they need to do is make something that works. They can get away with building something that wouldn't even be beta-worthy for big tech companies to release. To Magic, AI could simply mean more efficient infrastructure, keeping human interaction in place of UX. The more efficient they get, the more they can lower the price. The more they can lower the price, the more users they'll have. The more users, the more revenue, the more cash to spend on improvement. AI doesn't have to roll out of MIT looking like Jarvis just to be useful.
philip1209 11y ago
The issue with incorporating tech is that it speeds up requests and breaks this billing model. Changing the billing model in the future is of course possible, but in the near-term it strongly disincentives the team from trying to automate requests.
unfamiliar 11y ago
One possibility is being able to classify requests much more accurately, so that they get sent directly to a specialised "magician" that can complete the task very efficiently.
mrdrozdov 11y ago
"Get me a pepperoni pizza," is a phrase anyone with some basic nlp chops should be able to understand using freely available code. Here's an example that could get you started but on a different domain. http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/rnnslu.html http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/rnnslu.html Google, Facebook, many other companies (perhaps not Apple) publish many of their research findings and a lot of innovation is coming straight from academia. To answer your question more directly, the hardware, software and data required to run an effective machine learning platform is getting cheaper and more powerful every year, which should drive down price if they can replace human tasks with AI solutions.
madaxe_again 11y ago
I sincerely hope the strategy isn't "find the cheapest human labor possible" As evil as it seems, that's probably a sane strategy - as actual automation eats the job market, the number of unemployed, or those seeking multiple/alternate employment, will rise. These will more and more comprise displaced white collar workers. This will make the employment market a buyers market (moreso than it is already) and will result in decreased labour costs. So - call me cynical, but if that's their plan, it's robust - if potentially evil - at least it'll be providing employment.

by rtpg 11y ago

meowface 11y ago

It's an interesting idea, but I agree, I don't see how it's a tech company in any way.

themartorana 11y ago
This is weird to me. It may not be pushing the bar forward on AI or NLP, but it uses one of the most commonly used interpersonal communications technologies today to put a human experience in front of a seemingly boundless personal assistant. Look, it may not be Tesla, but there are a couple of unicorns that seem tech savvy now, that weren't so much for the first little while. AirBnB comes to mind - their analytics now are probably amazing, but they started as a website with a database. Doesn't make them any less of a technology company. Leveraging technology to break down barriers (immediate, constant, on-demand availability and scalability of a personal assistant) is a technology solution to a problem.
- meowface 11y ago
  It's still not really a tech company, though. Maybe you could call it a "remote company" or "virtual company" due to how they operate, but in my opinion, you can't really call yourself a technology company if you haven't programmed or engineered some sort of software or hardware.

iLoch 11y ago

AI is the obvious future for this yeah. I think the tech right now probably just centralizes around building really good customer profiles and excellent tools for assistants so that any assistant can pick up work for any customer.

seanlinehan 11y ago

You don't have to automate the parsing of queries to produce leverage here. Every time they answer a query successfully, I would imagine they add that to an internal repository of information. So the technology play would be less on the "figure out what they want" front and more on the "deliver exactly what they want" front. Need an on demand helicopter in NYC? Great, Magic knows just who to call for that because they already did it for Justin Kan. Need to rent the Exploratorium? Great, they can do that too. For more common requests that fit neatly into other on-demand services offering, they could ostensibly partner directly with those folks and integrate with them. That way, Magic could have their own master dashboard to purchase services with minimal effort.

rtpg 11y ago
that isn't technology though, you just might use technology to keep track of it (wiki/whatever). Maybe that's what paul meant by "technology" but that isn't a Tesla play by any stretch of the imagination.
- ethbro 11y ago
  Shaving 5 or 10s off average handle time with smarter tooling is absolutely technology. In fact, it's probably the most widely used technology on the planet. As someone who works in that space, helping people do similar things with greater accurately and quickness delivers a surprising amount of value... when you're talking about deploying that across 250+ desks. The target isn't to throw technology at 99% of all requests, but to deploy it on the smaller portion of the process it's suited to. The only thing faster than 100% machine is 99% machine + 1% human.
- argonaut 11y ago
  An internal logistics dashboard and automation pipeline is absolutely technology, and it's absolutely a competitive advantage.

jfoutz 11y ago

People are fairly predictable. Presumably they'll build software to handle common requests quickly. Google pizza is a good example, but i doubt google will do pizza, dry cleaning, and travel booking all in one shot. (but they might). It seems like these folks can find a local vendor for service X, have a button on some internal software to send it out, then just leverage that for all customers in that city. presumably the oddball requests get tracked similarly. "i want an elephant" might take a while the first time, but the software should remember contacts and whatnot to make it easy if they ever get the same request.

simoncion 11y ago
> Presumably they'll build software to handle common requests quickly. I'm not the OP, but... I guess, but again, where's the software? You can entirely reasonably solve that problem with a well-indexed medium-sized binder and a Rolodex.
- bonobo3000 11y ago
  It might not be necessary but it does help scale cheaply. You could have people pick up the phone and order food for you when requested, but if they can route that through an API 99% of the time it costs a whole lot less time & money.
- eitally 11y ago
  There are a lot of simple questions that are hard to find answers for if you don't know where to look, and those answers are often unique or only marginally repeatable. Take travel assistance, for example. If all you need to do are basic pre-travel concierge tasks, that's one thing, but what happens when your client tells you something like "I'm going to be driving from Denver to Salina, Kansas today with two young children in the car. I need several energy-releasing entertainment options along the route, as well as a family friendly hotel room in KC that's near the stadium and offers onsite guest laundry (machines, not full service)." None of this is hard, but it requires multiple web searches, probably a few phone calls, and hopefully some local expertise. Once an adequate database is compiled, software can help quickly retrieve viable options and minimize human intervention. Human curation will still be absolutely mandatory and expected in a service with this cost. Note: I just drove from San Jose to Raleigh with two young kids, including a day from Salina, KS to St Louis. We found the most amazing place to stop, and I highly recommend it to anyone driving E-W or W-E on I70. The Moon Marble Company (https://www.moonmarble.com/ https://www.moonmarble.com/) is not just a handmade marble shop. It has the best collection of retro toys I've seen anywhere in my life. We spent 3 hours browsing!

tedmiston 11y ago

> One possibility would be through AI... Excuse me if this is a bit naive, but I've always had the impression the whole point of Magic is to build the AI side. Maybe not communicating back to the user... perhaps that part's always done by a human, but a human with machine-aided decision making. I would love to see the internal interface that Magic's personal assistants are using today. Doing every task by hand with people probably doesn't scale. Maybe for $100/hr it does, but that could just be their way of targeting tasks for executives because they have a higher percentage of profit. I expect they're using the data from requests today as training to recognize narrow patterns to be automated tomorrow. Edit: I found this in their FAQ. > Q: Do you use AI to fulfill my requests? > Magic+ is fulfilled through a combination of top-tier executive assistants and concierges, paired with intelligent software. Our unique combination of humans and software is what enables us to consistently deliver an unparalleled level of service.

cmikec 11y ago

We are highly focused on software that automates and/or makes parts of Magic and Magic+ more efficient. Most of the founding team are engineers, including myself. At this time we can't say much about our specific technical approach, other than that it is a very difficult problem, we have a novel approach, and we are making progress.

toddmorey 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- georgespencer 11y ago
  That's exactly the reason I'd use a service like Magic. Finding stuff on Amazon takes dozens of clicks.
- pricechild 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
    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.

pnwhyc 11y ago

You're looking at AI as if it would be their primary product. They don't need to compete with Google or Apple on the front of AI as a polished product. Not now, anyways. All they need to do is make something that works. They can get away with building something that wouldn't even be beta-worthy for big tech companies to release. To Magic, AI could simply mean more efficient infrastructure, keeping human interaction in place of UX. The more efficient they get, the more they can lower the price. The more they can lower the price, the more users they'll have. The more users, the more revenue, the more cash to spend on improvement. AI doesn't have to roll out of MIT looking like Jarvis just to be useful.

philip1209 11y ago

The issue with incorporating tech is that it speeds up requests and breaks this billing model. Changing the billing model in the future is of course possible, but in the near-term it strongly disincentives the team from trying to automate requests.

unfamiliar 11y ago

One possibility is being able to classify requests much more accurately, so that they get sent directly to a specialised "magician" that can complete the task very efficiently.

mrdrozdov 11y ago

"Get me a pepperoni pizza," is a phrase anyone with some basic nlp chops should be able to understand using freely available code. Here's an example that could get you started but on a different domain. http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/rnnslu.html http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/rnnslu.html Google, Facebook, many other companies (perhaps not Apple) publish many of their research findings and a lot of innovation is coming straight from academia. To answer your question more directly, the hardware, software and data required to run an effective machine learning platform is getting cheaper and more powerful every year, which should drive down price if they can replace human tasks with AI solutions.

madaxe_again 11y ago

I sincerely hope the strategy isn't "find the cheapest human labor possible" As evil as it seems, that's probably a sane strategy - as actual automation eats the job market, the number of unemployed, or those seeking multiple/alternate employment, will rise. These will more and more comprise displaced white collar workers. This will make the employment market a buyers market (moreso than it is already) and will result in decreased labour costs. So - call me cynical, but if that's their plan, it's robust - if potentially evil - at least it'll be providing employment.