[swandive]

Idea to scale:

As a non-coder, I love reading the responses of programers here. "Automate this!" "There is no way to scale." "This needs AI."

As an outsider looking in, my idea to scale is similar to Uber. Have workers that can sign on to work whenever they have the time. The workers handle the orders and receive a cut of the fee you charge. It would be great if you could have some kind of rating system where the consumer could choose who they work with, but I'm not sure how to make that happen with SMS.

I'm not saying this is better or more cost efficient than automation. I just see it as a solution to their current problem.

Uber is looking to automate, but check out their current valuation. They can afford to do so all by scaling with humans.

I'll now wait to get hammered by HN. :)

[kitcar]

You're basically describing ODesk, Elance, Mechanical Turk, etc... Not saying this execution will/won't work, but there are lots of firms that seemed to have make it work to solve a similar / the same problem set.

[swandive]

So you'd SMS ODesk or Elance looking for a pizza?

[zxcvcxz]

That's just it, I wouldn't. This seems only useful for people who are maybe just too busy to do it them selves and have enough disposable income that paying a couple extra bucks to the guy handling your business isn't a big deal.

HN seems a little out of touch.

[netcan]

That's a pretty broad definition of "the same problem set," stuff that humans do.

[k__]

Things like Mechanical Turk are just creating minimum wage jobs and we were better of without them, I think.

Magic will create many call-center like jobs...

[kolinko]

In what universe creating additional demand for jobs is a bad thing? (Rhetolical, don't bother answering)

[k__]

Creating additional demand for low-level jobs is a bad thing, because no one really wants to do them. People just do them for the money. The goal should be to eliminate the need for people to do this, not to create even more of those jobs.

[nazgob]

Call-center jobs in US are not minimum wage?

[stanmancan]

Not in Canada. I work in telecommunications and technical support starts at $17/h. Sales starts at $12/h I think plus commission. Lots of sales reps in our call centres are easily clearing $50k a year. Everyone gets full extended health benefits. Minimum wage is around $10.25 I think?

[nazgob]

Good to know, thanks!

[swandive]

My idea is nothing like a call center. Each worker is their own boss. They decide when to work, and how hard they will work. The revenue they earn would be directly related to their effort, and not an hourly wage.

[kbart]

"Have workers that can sign on to work whenever they have the time. The workers handle the orders and receive a cut of the fee you charge."

The problem is how do you pay such workers? If that's per order cut, they will want to make as many orders as possible inevitably degrading the service quality. And it usually takes a single bad experience to put people off of such service.. Actually, I don't see how this can scale well, imho, they should market more like "personal assistant on demand" and include monthly fees or pay per assistant's time, what also could solve a questions-that-do-not-result-in-order problem.

[mbesto]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment