[cmikec]

Hi, this is Mike, one of the founders of Magic. Really sorry to hear about your experience here. Did you get a refund? If not, please text in to 83489 and mention this post, and we'll be sure to get it to you.

I can absolutely admit that when Magic first launched, we were over capacity and a certain percentage of orders went awry. I hate that this happened, but we really did not predict that the website would go viral so quickly. In fact, today, we still have such high demand for the service that there is a long waitlist for the regular service, and our $100/hr service is getting a lot of signups very quickly as well.

This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to make sure that people who had a very high bar for service quality would be able to use the service right away and be guaranteed to have the absolute highest level of service, no matter what.

I completely understand that given your past experience with Magic, you might not want to try Magic+. However, I can confidently say that if you try it, you will find that it feels very different from the Magic that you tried. Your keg will be there.

[davecraige]

Mike,

As you know I had a very bad experience with Magic as well.

I worked for you for free for a week and on boarded 63 new customers for you. You guys arbitrarily deleted my account, and abruptly shut off my autopay donations to numerous charities we had set up together.

Then you went silent and wouldn't return any of the ten messages I sent to you asking for access to my personal records and information regarding my numerous charity donations.

How can I encourage others to use your service if I was shown such an unprofessional and disrespectful experience?

[ksml]

For the curious, looks like more info here: http://www.davecraige.com/magic/

[davecraige]

Yes, thank you. That is the whole story. You can read it if you want.

I spent over $3,250 traveling to Silicon Valley. I spent over 60 hours of intense work to do a project for free for them that they requested.

I delivered them a beautifully custom 38 page research report that you can see here: http://f.cl.ly/items/3f3u1e14273P2v2a1Y2J/CAP1.pdf

I was treated like a second class citizen and tossed to the side. My account was deleted. I contacted all 4 of the founders. Not one would respond. They went dark.

I would hope that no one else gets treated as poorly as I was and experience this type of disrespect.

[marknutter]

> I spent over 60 hours of intense work to do a project for free for them that they requested.

That might be where you went wrong.

[davecraige]

At the time, Magic was one of the hottest startups in the Valley. I was willing to hustle hard to get my foot in the door.

But I agree with you, I need to be more judicial with my time in the future.

[marknutter]

Sounds like you got hustled. But it's a lesson learned, so at least there's some value there.

[TeMPOraL]

I'd be interested in seeing the founders respond to this.

We have stories like this every now and then with various companies, and here's something that makes me wonder: assuming that both parties are neither evil nor stupid (which I think is fair assumption in most cases), how exactly such situations happen? There's a lesson for every founder and manager hiding here.

[rm_-rf_slash]

I was screwed over by some startup founders that tricked me into working for free under the guise of "demonstrating mastery of Rails" and "proving my culture fit," but I wouldn't call those guys evil, just jerks.

So how does a situation like that happen? You justify it to yourself to cut corners in order to succeed, and because you're a job creator in America, you're entitled to respect in the end.

[firepoet]

I would definitely like to hear the response to this before I signed up for their service!

[RP_Joe]

Thanks for posting that.

[davecraige]

Thank you

[davecraige]

UPDATE: I reached out to the founders Mike and David on January 7th about this thread.

I received no response yet, but my twitter account was promptly blocked by David. http://f.cl.ly/items/1x3Y1h2n0i1Q1F3e1H1f/Screen%20Shot%2020...

I will be reaching back out to Mike in a week and will update you guys. Thx.

[davecraige]

UPDATE 2 : I have reached out to Mike three times now. Still haven't heard anything back. Possible stonewalling.