Our Statement
February 15, 2026
I'd rather not have written this. But when someone blocks you, and you discover through forwarded screenshots that a blog post has been published calling out your project, you run out of private options....
Shortly.. after we launched CrowdConnect, word reached us that a particular magician was telling people in the magic community that CrowdConnect was a copy of JOLT, an app by Steve Sheraton.
As any person handling in good faith would do, Robin reached out to the creator of JOLT as well as to the magician allegedly spreading this message, hoping to have an open and honest conversation, to hear their perspective, share ours, and prevent any assumptions or misunderstandings from spiraling further.
You can see here (13th of February).
We aimed to resolve this situation calmly and professionally. Instead, the situation escalated.
Steve's reply stated he had 'no idea' what our product does and recommended we 'consult IP counsel,' which to us came across as a legal threat. Robin followed up with more attempts to open the dialogue, offering an olive branch and even suggesting a potential partnership.
All other efforts to open dialogue were ignored....
Shortly after, 5Star was released at one dollar, a product Steve created as a direct response to our launch, which he described in his blog as 'The $1 Clapback App'.
A followed, describing CrowdConnect as a "$1,000 copycat," alongside a , complete with email templates and legal claims, soliciting our customers to ()
We only learned about the Facebook posts through friends who forwarded us screenshots. Turns out, , meaning we can't see his posts, participate in the discussion, or respond where the accusations are being made...
Let that sink in. We are:
- Advised to "consult IP counsel"
- Undercut with a one-dollar "clapback" product
- Watching our customers be solicited for refunds
...all while every attempt to reach out, share evidence, and resolve this privately was ignored.
Robin is described as having "stolen" Steve's work, in public posts we can largely not read or participate in, because we're both blocked by him.
Because these accusations are public, we feel it is only fair to share the timeline and evidence as well.
A note to Steve. If you are open to sharing the messages that were exchanged, we would happily publish the full communication for everyone to read. Out of respect for privacy, we are showing only our own messages for now. If anything in this post misrepresents what happened, we genuinely want to hear about it. We remain open to dialogue.
Addressing the accusations
Robin was already developing and performing the core concept behind CrowdConnect publicly in 2019, years before the product we are accused of copying was released.
Robin has performed this publicly for years, including at events like Blackpool. He has the videos to prove it.
If CrowdConnect supposedly copied a product introduced in 2024, a simple question arises: how could the same concept already have been publicly performed five years earlier by Robin?
We are not accusing JOLT of being based on Robin's ideas.
From everything we've seen, we are of the opinion that JOLT serves a different type of routine and is a different product which happens to have some overlap.
Also we acknowledge that ideas can develop in isolation. 5Star, on the other hand, appears to be a direct response to what we've built.
So why didn't we reach out to Steve before launching? Because it never occurred to us that anyone would see CrowdConnect as related to JOLT.
Why we never saw the comparison
To understand why it never occurred to us that CrowdConnect could be seen as a copy of JOLT, look at how JOLT describes itself.
JOLT's own headline on magic.pm: "A system that lets you remote control any phone in real-time. No Bluetooth, no WiFi pairing. Create custom effects and perform them instantly on spectators' devices."
CrowdConnect is built around a synchronized shared experience across an entire audience, where every phone in the room participates in the same reveal simultaneously. CrowdConnect is structured as an open prediction, where there is justified reason to let the entire audience participate, with a surprise call to action at the end.
Based on JOLT's own description, these are fundamentally different products, serving different uses.
No visible mentions of review, yet their most anticipated feature
JOLT showcases 30 routines on its website, all magic tricks, not a single one involving review collection. Its complete help documentation spans 16 pages with no mention of reviews anywhere. A YouTube video uploaded on February 3, 2026, just days before we launched, walks through 12 of these routines: zero mention of reviews, zero resemblance to the CrowdConnect flow (, , ).
JOLT does include a redirect feature, mainly used as escape feature to end clean. Its documentation describes it like this:
"Forward to any website with the escape site feature. Perfect for end of routine to show the genuine version of the faked content. Triggered via red box."
See .
It includes a link generator designed to match search results for Google - reinforcing that this is an escape hatch to hide evidence of the trick, not a tool for audience engagement. There is one reference to making phones jump to a profile so people can follow you, but the overwhelming weight of JOLT's own documentation, marketing, and showcased routines points to this being a cleanup function, not a core feature.
We couldn't find anything about Review collection and redirection prominently in any of JOLT's documentation, marketing, or 30 showcased routines.
On 15th of February, after our launch, Steve described this as .
We didn't see CrowdConnect as related to JOLT, and as a natural result we never reached out to Steve before launching. Not because we were hiding something, but because the products serve different purposes in fundamentally different ways. The idea that someone would look at a system for remote-controlling individual phones and see it as the same thing as a synchronized audience-wide open prediction, simply never crossed our minds...
The "DNA timeline" claim
On the 5Star help page, a drawing a line from iHypno (2009) to QR Panda (2013) to JOLT to 5Star. Steve presents this as proof of an unbroken lineage. We see it differently.
iHypno (2009, discontinued)
iHypno is visually the closest thing to CrowdConnect in Steve's catalog. It displays a hypnosis spiral followed by a card reveal. We understand why someone seeing CrowdConnect for the first time might be reminded of iHypno.
But a hypnotic spiral is one of the most generic animations in magic and hypnosis. It has been used in performances, apps, and media for decades. In iHypno, a card appears inside the spiral. In CrowdConnect, the hypnosis phase serves a completely different purpose: it is a branded anticipation-building moment featuring a (client's) logo. The reveal itself is a separate phase entirely, and is not limited to cards. We launched with Cards and numbers, but now we also support: words, magic squares, and custom images. CrowdConnect already offers multiple animation styles for the hypnosis phase, with more to follow.
More importantly, as far as we can find, iHypno ran on the performer's own phone, not on spectators' devices. There was no audience participation across multiple devices, no synchronized experience, no concept of an open prediction, and no redirect functionality.
The similarity begins and ends with "there is a spiral and a revelation on a phone."
QR Panda (2013, discontinued)
As far as we can find, QR Panda was a QR code that, once scanned, shows one image or redirects to a site as a revelation. No synchronized experience, no hypnosis phase, no shuffle phase, no anticipation buildup. Basically the functionality to change a link target, functionality that every link shortener service offers.
While CrowdConnect allows you to generate beautiful QR codes, the QR code is simply one way to access the page, which functions as an open prediction. Spectators can scan it, tap an NFC tag, or type in a URL. You don't even need a QR code at all. You can connect CrowdConnect to your own domain, which spectators can visit long before you start your routine.
The combination that never existed
Yes, CrowdConnect uses QR codes. So does every restaurant menu, airline boarding pass, and event ticket. Yes, CrowdConnect offers a hypnotic spiral as one of its animation options. Hypnotic spirals have been used in magic and media for decades. That is where the overlap with Steve's older products ends.
Also CrowdConnect allows to set the value that is revealed during your presentation by yourself or by one of the integrations.
From what we could find, JOLT never was about setting an input value to reveal, it's simply different.
As for the technologies that CrowdConnect and JOLT share: both use technology to manage the state of a webpage, and both have an option to redirect. These are generic web technologies used in countless applications. And if the argument is that JOLT used websockets first to show a synchronized state on a spectator's phone, Robin was demonstrably earlier. He was performing this publicly in 2019, years before JOLT existed. And even then, the two products use these technologies for completely different routines, different use cases, and different audiences.
CrowdConnect is not a combination of Steve's products. Robin didn't copy Steve. But even if you were to disagree with this, when it comes to using technology to control what a spectator sees on a site, and being able to redirect multiple spectators phones... Robin was doing that publicly years before JOLT existed...
Visually, you could probably partly in some way or another create a somewhat similar looking "effect" with JOLT, using gifs and screenshots. Which in that case would be a force, and not an open prediction with an input
JOLT also promotes that you can create your own custom "apps" within their system, largely by using screenshots to recreate the look of existing applications. You could, for example, build something that visually mimics an unlock screen. Does that make every unlock app released after JOLT a copy?
Our perspective
I read about Steve's history. I read about iBeer and the copycats he fought. I read about the lawsuits against Fortune 500 companies. The decades of fighting for his creations. As an app developer myself, I genuinely looked up to him. Everything I read made me respect him more.
But what I'm seeing now has changed that.
Steve's blog closes with: "And to anyone else thinking about cloning my work and pitching it as yours, I've got another $1 app in me. And you've only got two nuts." Compare that tone with Robin's first message: "Hi Steve, I'd like to clear something up calmly before it turns into unnecessary noise." From our perspective: one side tried to open a conversation. The other released a one-dollar competing product, published a blog post, and set up a dedicated refund page directed at our customers.
I respect Steve's history of protecting his work. But when I see someone block all dialogue, say he didn't open the material that followed, build a one-euro version that appears to closely mirror the flow of CrowdConnect, set up a dedicated page directed at our customers, call our pricing "Ponzi," make public statements about us, and threaten anyone who might do the same, I can't help but question whether that is consistent with the values he says he stands for.
What we want
We didn't want a war, and we still don't. We would have preferred this to be a conversation instead of a public conflict. But we cannot stay silent while our story is being told for us, by someone who refused to listen to it.
In the magic community, there used to be a code. A set of unwritten rules about respecting each other's creations, about having a conversation before going public, about not undercutting someone's launch with a one-euro clone. We believe that code still matters.
Even though the 5Star system was built as a direct response to CrowdConnect. Legally, it seems he could continue doing this. From our research, it's hard to protect an idea. But this was never really about legal protection. It was about basic respect.
I find it sad to feel the need to spend time writing this. And I would be lying if I said I didn't lose any sleep over it. This whole situation has taken time and energy away from what I would've spent it on: building the product.
We share this because we want people to know both sides. All screenshots shown here are from publicly accessible websites, or messages that we sent ourselves. All quotes from Steve are from his own public blog post. Form your own opinion.
CrowdConnect is being used with pleasure by performers around the world. Customers are happy, feedback is positive
, and we keep building what we believe is a unique and valuable product.
In the Facebook post used to promote his blog article, Steve writes: "What happens when a $1,000 copycat picks a fight with ."
We didn't copy, and we didn't pick a fight. We tried to start a conversation...
Chris & Robin
CrowdConnect product by BlueGlobal B.V.
All quotes attributed to Steve Sheraton are taken from his own public blog posts, and the referenced screenshots are from publicly accessible sources or messages we sent ourselves.