Idea Anglers Launches Private Beta of Membership Site

Co-Founders Neal Rohrbach and Bradford Shimp announce the launch of a private beta for the member site on their online collaborative tool for small business, Idea Anglers. The public launch is anticipated in early Fall.

Valdosta, GA, August 14, 2009 -- Idea Anglers, the brainchild of co-founders Neal Rohrbach and Bradford Shimp, has launched the private beta of their online collaborative tool for small businesses and individuals. The private beta is giving a select audience of their newsletter subscribers and guides a glimpse at the member benefits. Those participating will have an opportunity to join in on discussions about an idea generated by Bradford Shimp. The beta test will show the participants how an idea can begin taking shape into a business.

The member site includes a social community powered by MemberHub, in which discussions, files, whiteboards and calendars can be shared and collaborated on between the members and Idea Anglers' team of guides. Other member privileges will include exclusive access to chats and webinars on specific business related topics, including, but not limited to, startup assistance, accounting, technology, public relations, copy writing, advertising and social media. Idea Anglers will also offer mini-courses on a monthly basis to the members. Mini-courses will also be available to the general public for a nominal fee.

The first mini-course will launch immediately following the private beta of the member site, and will include information and mentoring for small businesses and individuals interested in using Twitter for business. The mini course will include webinar training, a collection of articles written by leading professionals and a Q&A between the participants and Idea Anglers' guides. After the mini-courses finish, all participants will have access to an eBook which will summarize the interactions throughout the course.

"I'm very excited about seeing five months of Brad and I's hard work coming together," says Rohrbach, who also serves as the company's Chief Creative Officer, "it wasn't ten minutes after the beta launched that members were already collaborating and moving an idea closer to becoming a successful business."

Idea Anglers is still accepting applications to join their team of professional guides, and offer a newsletter for anyone interested in learning more about the project on their website at http://www.ideaanglers.com.

For more information about the private beta, mini-courses or about Idea Anglers in general, please email info@ideaanglers.com, or call (920) 64-IDEAS.

About the Company: Idea Anglers is an online collaborative tool for small to medium size businesses and individuals.Their focus is to serve business minded people. People who have ideas for their businesses but need a little (or a lot) of help shaping and implementing those ideas. If you are one of these "people" you have discovered a great resource in the making.

Idea Anglers - "Catch and Release Creativity"
http://www.ideaanglers.com
info@ideaanglers.com
phone: (920) 64-IDEAS
Twitter: @ideaanglers

Two Total Strangers Start A Business Thanks to Twitter

World Wide Web May 2nd, 2009 -- It all started as a tweet. Bradford Shimp and Neal Rohrbach are avid users of Twitter, the popular micro-blogging web site. Each day, a growing army of Twitter users are sending countless tweets. Each tweet is a short update of no more than 140 characters.

This one particular tweet wasn't that unique, but it spurred an idea, which has grown into an interesting business project. On a whim, Bradford Shimp sent out a tweet that said, "I feel like I am an idea wrangler." When Neal Rohrbach read this tweet, something about it resonated in his mind. It wasn't long before he sent a reply tweet to Bradford, saying that he had registered a new web site. The name had morphed into Idea Anglers, and Neal had registered www.ideaanglers.com.

Registering web addresses isn't new territory for Neal or Bradford. Both own several domain names, and both have websites. Neal has a design business at dixiedesign.us and Bradford has a business blog at allbizanswers.com and a business book review site at booksunwound.com. 

Both Bradford and Neal are idea people. Talk to them about ideas and they could spout off dozens of interesting business ideas and concepts. But, because both are busy with current projects, many of these ideas just lay dormant.

Idea Anglers probably would have had the same fate, had it not been for Twitter.
 

A few months ago, Bradford and Neal did not even know each other. They met via Twitter, where both are active participants in a small business Twitter chat hosted by SBBuzz.biz. They got to know each other by following each other's Twitter posts.

It was out of this active conversation via Twitter that Idea Anglers was born. Through a series of tweets, it went from a germ of an idea, to a domain name being registered, to an ongoing collaboration and a business being formed.

Neal and Bradford have moved some of the conversation to other web services, such as LinkedIn, Basecamp and Skype, but much of the development has taken place on Twitter.

Building Idea Anglers has been a truly collaborative effort. One will work on some part of the project and then tweet about it to the other. Through this instant collaboration, Idea Anglers has taken shape.

Bradford and Neal are developing Idea Anglers to be a place for collaborative business idea development. They are looking for members who either have a business idea, but are not sure what to do with it, or who are business owners who need specific expertise for certain areas of their business. Idea Anglers will bring together a network of experts who will provide resources and work in a collaborative fashion on new ideas and projects. 

In many ways, Idea Anglers will be modeled after the success that Neal and Bradford have had working as a collaborative team. A process that was made possible through instant communication of ideas via Twitter.

Idea Anglers is presently in pre-launch phase. Interested parties are encouraged to sign up for a newsletter and take part in a survey at IdeaAnglers.com. Neal and Bradford are also actively looking for experts to join Idea Anglers.

As they promote their new project, Bradford and Neal have turned to an obvious resource. They have set up a Twitter account at twitter.com/ideaanglers and are actively building interest through their Twitter network. This is only fitting for a business that would never have happened if it weren't for Twitter.

For more information on Idea Anglers contact ideas@ideaanglers.com