Everything On Demand: It’s Magic

Forget about Hogwart’s. Forget about Merlin and Gandalf and all those other bearded fogies. Even forget about Criss Angel and David Copperfield, because what we’re about to discuss is Magic.

It’s not an illusion, it’s not a fantasy, but rather it’s a recent startup firm out of Silicon Valley that can—for a fairly hefty price—make pretty much anything on demand.

The idea is exciting; simply send a text message to Magic, describing what is is you’d like. A flight booked, certain groceries acquired and delivered, and so on are all available here. Then, once the message is received, Magic goes to work and brings it right to the user. Magic partners with several other services, from GrubHub to Postmates, to make the delivery happen.

A new premium concierge service associated with it, Magic+, charges the hefty rate of $100 per hour to accomplish the task, and is described as the equivalent of “Jarvis meets Pepper Potts,” a kind of personal assistant that’s always on call but charges a huge rate to accomplish tasks. The original Magic service is still available, at least report, but has a wait list of over 50,000 users.

The company’s stated goal is to get the prices down so that more people can put this to use, and that’s a good plan, because right now it’s an incredibly niche market that only the wealthy will use.

That’s a prime recipe for competition, and no business really wants to be in the position of offering services to the ultra-wealthy only against a backdrop of other competitors when the only real way to differentiate is on price.

If everybody’s offering the “we’ll do anything on demand” concept, it then becomes a commodity, and it’s a race to the bottom in terms of who can do it for the lowest price.

As long as it can expand fairly quickly, Magic should be able to build brand recognition and ultimately come out ahead. That’s great news for the company, though it will have plenty to watch out for and ensure that it holds its leadership pace. No fantasy, no illusion…just one great idea that will have to work hard to keep itself distinct from future competitors.