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Fin — A new kind of assistant that runs in the cloud
UPDATE: Since the time of this post, we have lowered prices 25% to 40% and dramatically improved the quality of service across all major categories.
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@dshan @kortina @abadesi hey all... so, we bill at $1 per minute on demand, so you only use what you pay for. This is much less expensive than having a full time assistant in most cases, but isn’t cheap for sure (good help never is!) — in the case above my sense is that if it took us 160 min to do all those things it would have taken at least as long for anyone else!
@dshan Yikes! That's also why I think it's beneficial to use the right service that specializes in what you're looking for. My company, Journy (gojourny.com), specializes in travel experiences and because we've done stuff like hire in-home chefs for travelers in 75+ destinations around the world, it'd take us a fraction of the time to help with something like that. Because we specialize in travel and reservations, our fees start at $25 per day of your trip (we too are updating our pricing, but the max you'd pay is $50 per day of travel plus an additional $5 per person above 4 travelers).
@joshdance One way to think about this might be thinking about how you would answer this question for 2 full time human assistants. Both theoretically do the same thing / serve the same role. What's nice about on demand services like these is you can with relatively low cost try both and compare your results.
"Currently, Fin is only available to United States citizens. By continuing, you confirm that you are a citizen of the United States."
Boo. Why is this? Is it about citizenship or where you are based?
Looking for a UK-based beta tester whose tried other personal assistant services optimistic that Fin will be better? 🤔
Well done @lessin. It looks beautiful and well thought of. It reminded me our conversation in Tel Aviv a few years ago about the space of virtual PA's. There's much to do - good luck!
I got as far as entering my billing details and backed out because I have no idea on how much I would use/try the service and what kind of bill I would get. Why not give some typical task examples and costs involved? At the very least you should offer a free task or two for the user to understand its limitations before they incur any unnecessary costs. Get them hooked, then bill them.
Using technology should bring efficiency and cost savings. Fin is suggesting that you would pay the same for an "average assistant", I don't want just an average assistant, and if Fin is saving on the human element it should pass those savings on to the consumer.
@horsthuis we do give examples nick... and the machine learning and yield management we do does actually make Fin significantly less expensive than it would be for the same caliber of service by us based assistants. You could hire an overseas VA for less per hour at first blush, but when you consider the real cost of a VA, finding, training, managing, paying regardless of use, etc.. it actually ends up being far more expensive than it looks - and without our tools and shared knowledge generally far lower quality. We aren’t the cheapest solution out there / aren’t trying to be (though someday we would love to lower prices and include more people) but for now we are on demand quality first!
@lessin Thanks for responding Samuel.
Whilst you do offer examples on the home page you don't indicate how much that task cost to complete. Try before you buy would allow the user to ascertain what Fin is able to cope with.
How are you calculating that Fin is less expensive, particularly if the AI element incorrectly assumes part of a task and then has to be repeated whereas the human would have potentially been correct the first time?
@lessin @horsthuis See section 4 on data from this blog post for some example ranges of time spent on requests from a few different categories: https://blog.fin.com/building-hy...
I think I've tried every personal assistant app in Fin is by far the best - it's the real deal, incredibly useful.
"Hey Fin! Can you find out next week's lottery numbers so I can afford your subscription fee?"
Congrats on the PH launch! I love this idea.
I don't see a lot around security & privacy as it relates to giving email access. That's the one thing that is holding me back from signing up as I have a massive amount of data in my google inbox.
Any feedback on that?
@varundave someday we would love to bring the price down, but for now we are confident Fin is far more cost effective than having a full time assistant ... and completely on demand so you only pay for what you use & you get the benefit of our whole team’s shared knowledge and attention!
@varundave Since the time of this post, we have dramatically improved the quality of service and lowered prices 25% to 40% across all major categories. Read more here: https://www.fin.com/post/2018/6/...
They seem to be failing at only using as much user data as absolutely necessary for their product to function. According to their privacy policy, your data is shared with others, whether you want it or not, and you can’t ask for your data to be deleted. A nice surprise in an email that’s sent to you after signing up (presuming that you, like 99% of all other users, don’t take time to fully read their privacy policy)!
Please explain @kortina @lessin.
From their User Data Policy (Privacy Policy?):
**Does Fin share the Information it collects with other People?**
Yes. As a general rule, Fin shares the Information it collects and learns from you with other People, including People who do not use Fin. This includes Information Fin collects and learns from your Communications and Conversations (including the things you ask Fin to do), as well as any Information Fin collects and learns from your address book, calendar, and email account (including Contact Information). Fin may also share the fact that you use Fin with other people.
If Fin shares something it collects from you, Fin will not identify you by name as the source of that Information unless you give Fin permission to do so (either through this Data Policy or otherwise). You give Fin permission to identify you as the source of any Information shared with your starred or trusted connections. You also give Fin permission to identify you as the source of any Information you share publicly using Fin.
If you want to share Information with Fin, but do not want Fin to share that Information with anyone else, you should place it in the Fin Vault.
Fin does not sell your personally identifiable information to advertisers. Fin will also not share the transcript of any emails it collects from accessing your email account.
**Does Fin delete any Information it collects?**
No. Because Fin is a collective knowledge system, Fin retains all of the Information it collects and learns, including Information it collects and learns from you.
If you want to share Information with Fin, but want to be able to delete it later, you should place it in the Fin Vault.
They seem to be failing at only using as much user data as absolutely necessary for their product to function. According to their privacy policy, your data is shared with others, whether you want it or not, and you can’t ask for your data to be deleted. A nice surprise in an email that’s sent to you after signing up (presuming that you, like 99% of all other users, don’t take time to fully read their privacy policy)!
From their User Data Policy (Privacy Policy?):
**Does Fin share the Information it collects with other People?**
Yes. As a general rule, Fin shares the Information it collects and learns from you with other People, including People who do not use Fin. This includes Information Fin collects and learns from your Communications and Conversations (including the things you ask Fin to do), as well as any Information Fin collects and learns from your address book, calendar, and email account (including Contact Information). Fin may also share the fact that you use Fin with other people.
If Fin shares something it collects from you, Fin will not identify you by name as the source of that Information unless you give Fin permission to do so (either through this Data Policy or otherwise). You give Fin permission to identify you as the source of any Information shared with your starred or trusted connections. You also give Fin permission to identify you as the source of any Information you share publicly using Fin.
If you want to share Information with Fin, but do not want Fin to share that Information with anyone else, you should place it in the Fin Vault.
Fin does not sell your personally identifiable information to advertisers. Fin will also not share the transcript of any emails it collects from accessing your email account.
**Does Fin delete any Information it collects?**
No. Because Fin is a collective knowledge system, Fin retains all of the Information it collects and learns, including Information it collects and learns from you.
If you want to share Information with Fin, but want to be able to delete it later, you should place it in the Fin Vault.
Pros:(Haven’t used)
Cons:Privacy policy is very concerning.
Amazing service that saves me lots of time.
Pros:Fin can do anything!
Cons:It's not free
I'm curious what the breakdown is currently between human and AI work on requests?
@sarahadowney great question - and actually a really interesting intellectual one as well....for us, because we are quality first... all requests have humans in the loop, even the most trivial. we would rather have the backup and not make mistakes / correct what we can with human empathy and intelligence rather than skip people on some things.... but, the question is, if humans are always in the loop, how do you think about the % machine a process is. We have benchmarks in things like speed, quality, etc. and then measure against those... and it varies by request type! (trade secret!)
@lessin Thanks. And yeah, this tradeoff/breakdown is fascinating and will become even more of a question as we move towards AGI. For now, I'm with you guys that anything you need done right needs human involvement. Otherwise it becomes more about the human user modifying his or her behavior to adapt to the AI (like with the Amazon Echo: you have to make requests in a very specific way for them to work).
@vikmeup Fin can do all those requests/ they are all real... we don't respond verbally, and we prioritize tasks so not everything is instant.
I've been using Fin for about three weeks and have had a phenomenal experience. I wonder what part of responses is AI and what's a human...
The app came into my life through a Facebook ad, as so many things do, and I probably had it for two weeks before actually using it.
In the past I've had VAs but it never really worked out.
So, I had Fin installed and was traveling abroad so decided to use Fin to handle calls and such and it went so smooth I've been handling more and more tasks over.
Example of a task, I sent Fin an update every morning of my trip and they called my grandparents to let them know how the trip was going. My grandparents loved it!
Most tasks are completed quickly, or an update is provided indicating when they'll be completed or their status. I definitely feel like I'm getting more value out of the app than I'm paying.
The one thing I'm not a huge fan of, and this completely a UX issue, not performance. The desktop interface of the app feels very wire frame.
I quit the registration process when they ask for my credit card, it's not even widely used or maybe even available so I won't pay for something I cannot even try or get my friends' opinion about.
@jarnix I get that julien - unlike pure tech solutions every request costs us money and supports our awesome ops team... so we can’t cost effectively do trialing for free... Maybe someday... but since the product hunt offer is no commitment you could try it for something small to start!
@lessin Thank you for your answer. Maybe my time isn't that valuable at the moment :)
Though I think that a free trial would benefit your product (I don't know if you raised money yet, how much, etc, it's none of my business :) ) for onboarding new customers.
Ever since YC-backed Magic launched 3 years ago, there's been a wave of personal assistant services hitting the market. From my experience, most were either too expensive or unreliable. I used Fin during the beta ~1 year ago but it never worked into my habits and after several price changes, I was uncertain how much I would be charged for each request.
Side note: to properly evaluate the cost you need to consider how much your time is worth. Services like this are ultimately selling time, removing trivial tasks (e.g. make reservations at a restaurant for at 6pm on Friday) to free up one's calendar.
What's been your biggest learning over the last few years building Fin, @lessin and @kortina?
@rrhoover we have learned a ton Ryan... and written a bunch about it at http://blog.fin.com
@rrhoover kortina wrote a particularly good 2017 roundup recently with a bunch of key insights at https://blog.fin.com/building-hy...
@lessin @rrhoover See also my comment above ( https://www.producthunt.com/post... ) for a few other key insights regarding time that are not captured in this post https://blog.fin.com/building-hy...
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