Wednesday was a pretty big day for the team at Bottlespark. We launched our service into open beta.

If you don’t know, I’m one of the founders of Bottlespark. We’re a software platform that helps connect online influencers with advertisers and sponsors. “Influencers” is a buzzy buzzword which means a lot of things. In our case it’s primarily streamers on platforms like Twitch.tv, Mixer, Youtube, Facebook, etc.

And if you’re not familiar with those buzzwords, streamers are people who live-broadcast whatever it is they’re doing. It’s mostly playing video games, but it’s also sometimes stuff like cooking, crafting, fitness, even reading out loud and performing(?) ASMR. Yes, people come to watch people play video games.

At Bottlespark, we provide tools that allow these folks to partner up with advertisers, promote them, and get paid.

The launch on Wednesday wasn’t terribly conventional. We were planning to send an email out to our entire beta list, half of which I needed to import into Mailchimp.

It didn’t occur to me that the automated new subscriber email would go out to imported email addresses.

And we’re off. The email wasn’t NOT relevant, but it wasn’t exactly the splash we were hoping to make. And contextually, it was pretty random. And I was afraid of people being like, “WTF”. That put us on the clock to get the real email out along with an apology. I didn’t want that random email just sit.

I got the real email out within an hour which kicked off massive spike of signups and all the bug reports and support requests that comes along with that for the next several hours, sending the team into a frenzy

maybe a little before we were all mentally prepared.

JT (co-founder) later said that I “Leroy Jenkinsed” the day. Which seemed pretty appropriate. I changed my twitter display name as a badge of honor (shame). If you’re not familiar with the meme, you really should be. Watch this and you’ll get an idea of what I did to the team.

So, we’re open. If you’re an influencer on Twitch or elsewhere, please come check it out. We launched influencer stores and team management features.