Agreed. Given it's a nascent product with few users/retailers and low barrier to entry (there are at least a dozen similar scan-code-for-punch-card apps), it sounds like a pure talent buy. And $10MM sounds high if that is truly the case.
I actually thought the 10k price tag was extremely reasonable based on the article write up. Yes it's beyond most personal users - but that is not out of the reach of even a small group of people (be it education, maker spaces, or small business). I would have expected an extra 0 on the price tag.
That's a crazy evaluation, is that company really worth 7.1Instagrams?
It really is a nice product, but it feels like a 'First-To-Market' success story. Especially since it's built on top of electron, which I'm still trying to accept as a real platform for application development, and not the '3d printer' of the software world.
I hope they don't use this money to feature-swamp the app, and instead focus inward on performance and migrating to a more stable platform.
I don't know about the price but you are not wrong. A lot of naysayers just don't know how to use it well enough in their workflow. This is definitely the future of the industry though.
I mean the value prop is the software functionality, not the storage. You think lastpass/1password are funding their development with a markup on storage?
I can get the argument that it’s not worth $36 but not because of storage costs.
However it's clear we are years and years of development away from this actually being relevant over conventional tools. It really seems like were just giving money to Microsoft for developing what will ultimately just be internal patents going towards consumer or business facing products in the nearer term.
I can't just help thinking that if this software was truly both non-trivial and useful that it would be relatively easy to pick up $30k "after" open sourcing it via consulting or customization work.
The sales cost and R&D costs seem high. I could see sales cost being high to get faster adoption with tail-end profit. BUT 450M R&D... it's a document signing application. Seems like there's room to cut costs without impact to the business. For example, there's no way Box spent 450M/year in R&D to build out it's own docusign equivalent.
I'm perplexed at the cost of these. I get that they're aimed at the corporate market, and this is probably spare change from their perspective, but does that mean that the education, small-business and personal markets don't deserve the same level of security?
The device must cost a couple of dollars (at most) to manufacture, and I highly doubt the development and service costs add up anything close to the amount they're being sold for, so is the price simply what they can get away with?
Security-wise, how does this compare against a (free) phone-based 2FA app (be it TOTP or network based)?
I'm not against paying the real cost for a product/service, but this seems to be one where it doesn't add up.
I get that the market for this likely isn't very large, so higher priced, but the pricing personally just feels out of line compared to other similar developer tools.
The only companies that could afford to use this are the cash pumped start-ups, who have the talent and luxury where they could likely roll something similar from scratch. There's no way small independent projects or open source apps could afford this.
I'd love to implement this in the work we do for clients. But we do so many apps for different clients that it would be a non starter. Looks cool, but couldn't see the cost working ever.
That's a lot of money for a product that's still in Alpha. This seems like a complex problem with many use cases. Are you concerned about product-market fit or have you already done enough beta testing to know you're on the right track?
But even for backend access. The price is way up there for something this simple. That much talent shown in the video should probably be capable of bringing down the cost close to $35 or maybe even less. What they're doing takes time and effort, not that much technically complicated by these days standards.
Yeah that's what I was thinking too. It doesn't sound like money well spent, it sounds like a bargain to me, like "you'd be stupid not to do it" cheap for something the size of Google.
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.
It just sounds like there is a small group of people who are very happy to pay eye-watering amounts of money for (what sounds like at least) really well-crafted productivity software. Good on them for showing there is a market for it
Good product, but still can't beat Cointracking in my opinion by number of features, supported APIs and looks less polished. The pricing ($1k? seriously?) is non competitive, either. Cointracking prices are quite ridiculous as well. It's good to see a competition, but overall I feel like the early adopters community so far is being screwed by startups like this. $1k for a glorified excel spreadsheet is a joke
I'm not sure I understand the value proposition. Supporting abandoned scanners is great, but $40 for essentially a driver seems rather steep. That's half the cost of a brand new scanner that will work with whatever software I want.
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