We thought we'd launch it ourselves later if it did well, and other people have been posting it on Product Hunt, Reddit, HN themselves...
I'm here to answer any questions, although we've hardly slept!
I stopped using them after this bad experience. I asked them to send about $100 of good chocolate as a gift, and they just sent a $10 bar, 10 times. Duh.
Anyways, I felt a very good sensation looking over this. Probably because it's just such a PITA to do things like order pizza. Gotta talk to people, decline sales questions, etc. What a relief to not have to deal with that day-to-day stuff. Or just going out to the store or grabbing lunch before the place closes. A personal assistant I pay on demand for anything? Sweet.
Is this sarcasm? I can't see how wrangling an order through an intermediary is easier than just ordering from the local pizzeria's website.
Not to mention that it takes a non-trivial time to confirm - in exogen's example above, it was 69 minutes plus delivery time. Small questions about relatively trivial things really drag out that confirmation time.
Often I'm just on my phone at night, no tablet/laptop. So say I want to get some food. I've got to go find the damn website. Remember a login maybe. Or deal with some JS-laden thing that doesn't render smoothly on my 6" Android. Sort all that shit out. Wonder if I have cash for a tip, cause I feel obligated most times.
Or calling. I gotta actually dial, talk to someone. Deal with all their questions if I want combos or the offer and I'll save $2 if I just say yeah, and what's my phone number and address again?
I realise I should get over this. That I'd do better in life (especially if I'm gonna sell my own software) if I got more comfortable just calling people and telling them what to do.
Meanwhile, I'm already imagining how awesome this is gonna be next time I'm in SF. I leave the office, start walking home. Text Magic and say "hey get me some X from Y". Get home and unpack my mind and someone comes and gives me food.
If it's an hour confirmation time, that's not as magic, but it's not a show-stopper. With less coordination than making the order myself, I can just pipeline things to work out.
Perhaps this reflects badly on me or is a commentary on society or laziness or I dunno. But I'm pretty fucking happy to imagine I can have someone else unlock the city for me if I'm not feeling up to it.
Here's how sick I am: I would order lunch via this every day, versus trying to get myself to go at the right time. Not too early because of the lines, but not too late because then they run out of good stuff or close. But I should probably get out a bit more so I won't use it every day just because of that. Otherwise I totally would. Hell, if they are streamlined enough, I'd even do it to order a cup of frozen yogurt (I'd probably pay $15-20 twice a week for delivery alone). I do prefer to get out and walk and take breaks, but sometimes it just doesn't work out, or it's too far, or whatever lameass excuse.
If there was a standard by which browsers stored payment and delivery details, a little beefed up from what we have now, would that get us part way? And then an endorsed way of interacting with an ordering system that can answer questions by default (no newsletter signup, no insurance, no warranty, default shipping, etc).
Loads of security issues, but we're going to have to solve this sort of thing eventually.
Isn't that basically the idea of PayPal or Amazon Payments and similar things?
If so, it has since become standards track: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#dom-form-r...
Alternatively, what if exogen wasn't willing to increase the order price by 50%? Back to the drawing board for another round at a different shop. It seems like a slow way to get food unless you're particularly laid back about pricing and what arrives, or you know exactly what's available at the shops you want to source from.
Of course, it'll depend on their execution. They're gonna have to keep a reputation of not totally ripping me off, like Amazon. With Amazon, I don't ever, ever, price compare. If I was gonna buy a 256 GB SSD and Amazon said it was $300, I'd go "well shit, I guess they went up" and that's that. If they keep abusing me, I'll figure it out, so keep the abuse low, and if I get pissed off, comp me and make me feel special.
There's no reason Magic needs to be slow and involve lots of back and forth so long they don't give me a reason to distrust them.
Edit: But you're right. If it's always slow, always back-n-forth, always weird pricing I need to check, then it wouldn't be great. So I'm just gonna hope they do a good job.
How did that go? Do they just find you a scalper and you pay the overcharge, or do they find you one at retail price on launch day?
Best concierge thing was going to a packed restaurant, told it'd take a long time without reservations, making a call and turning around to "right this way". No fee from Amex. They really wanna sell the flattery/status idea to get you spending more and feeling the $450/$5000 annual fees are worth it.
OTOH if you don't mind coming off as a dick, you can pull out a Centurion card and try to bully/bluff people with a "don't you know who I am" kinda deal. Though I did love the one time a friend tried this and the clerk just laughed and said "we don't take Amex". Also, other banks are issuing "Black" cards so there's a lot of people trying this not even being Amex holders.
Centurion used to come with more benefits, but they've been pulling them back and making it more of a show-off "I'm so elite" kind of thing. (A big blow was losing Continental elite status, since United is Chase's bitch.) They're building out airport lounges now to help compensate. And in Toronto Pearson, because Canada is just so incompetent, airlines don't have faster lines for security, just Air Canada and Amex. Rather annoying if you're a United 1K or otherwise paid for first class. That's probably the only reason I'd consider getting an Amex card again.
Nowadays, even random VISA cards will have concierge services, because it's fairly cheap, underused, yet makes people feel special. And for the cost of a Platinum card ($495 for primary, then $195 I think) you can use a lot of other services. And Centurion cards were $5000/$2500. I think you could just carry $5000 in cash and get the same kind of "respect".
(I haven't used Amex in years. Despite paying on time, always, and having a runrate of over $250K a year, they did a financial review, requesting my tax/employment records. I told them to fuck off and that was that.)
"Anything you want" makes it sound like people can use it like they'd use Siri.
How do you plan to handle security related dangerous items? For example, an user may ask you to deliver a package taken from one place to another place and you may arrange that but that package may contain dangerous/destructive/harmful materials which may be against law of the land where you operate.
You can ask user to confirm contents but he/she may lie and faithfully you may try to deliver and in between you may get struck in legal issues. If the origin is well known or reputed enough, then risk may be less but otherwise, there is an element of risk. Have you considered it? and how do you plan to handle it safely? Thanks.
But...then I concluded that surely it's ultimately cheaper and safer to just hire your own drug couriers. Given the slightest risk of discovery, they're less likely to reveal anything about the sender or to know the identity the recipient, unlike Magic.
So yeah, some people will always slip some shady stuff through every now and then. But I don't think Magic is the best solution to any of those illicit problems. No illegal arms dealer is sitting around thinking, "If only I had someone to deliver all these gun orders, I'd be rich!"
"We'll order what you need from the appropriate service (e.g. DoorDash, Instacart, Postmates, etc.), and deal with them"
All of these services handle the delivery when you order directly through them, so I don't think Magic is accepting a hand-off from them and then adding an extra leg to a trip. It sounds like Magic is just acting as a middle-man in these cases. I don't see anything on their site which suggests that they ever actually handle your stuff.
Here's hoping you can scale up fast enough to outpace demand and give everyone a good first impression.
There must be other services that let you text internationally, or pretend to have a US number.