Creating something new in the exciting time of crisis

It wasn’t easy to say goodbye, but Fischer nevertheless did. The young German journalist had been working at different broadcasting companies, at Financial Times in Germany, at ZDF and in Washington. His love for traditional journalism is still strong. Yet as people increasingly collect their information on the internet and less from newspaper and broadcasting, Fischer chose to leave the old industry behind him.

“I thought it was a really exciting time to use this disruption to make place for new ideas. This is an excellent opportunity to start something for myself”, he says.

AU Alumni has reached Fischer in a small break in his busy schedule. When we finally get ahold of him, he is at a conference in Germany with only little time available. He politely apologizes for the inconvenience, but there’s no doubt that he’s a busy man at the moment.

He has a vision with Tame and it’s big. Especially young people have stop using traditional media as the source of information. Now, they get most from the social media. Yet there is no journalistic code of ethics for social media, Fischer says:

“And that’s what I want to change. I want to build an algorithm, that automatically make sense of all the information out there with the journalistic code of ethics in mind and finds the content with value. That’s the vision”.

Starting something new
The road to this vision started with boredom, concern and the feeling that something has to change. After having what he describes as “a very boring office job” for a while, Fischer chose to work as a journalist, which he really found exciting. But the industry was hit especially hard by the crisis and he started to lose his trust in the established media.

“I followed what all of the big publishers and production companies were doing, and I really felt that none of them really seemed to adapt to the fundamental change that was happening”, says Fischer.

Therefore, he decided to move to Aarhus to participate in the Erasmus Mundus Master in Journalism. 

Here, he found the inspiration that would become the start of Tame, which is a content search engine, that can find the most relevant links, topics and people on Twitter.

“The Mundus environment was obviously very inspiring, because we were working with people from so many different countries - and they all have their crazy ideas and experiences from their own countries”.

A small group from the program started meeting and discussing ideas. In the beginning, Fischer didn’t think it could turn into something big, but “the dynamic was really cool”, so they chose to give it a shot.

Together with Torsten Müller, he started working on an idea that eventually didn’t succeed. But from this idea, they had the funding and experience to create Tame.

A reason to listen
What they needed to seriously set off was the right developer, which is extremely difficult to find, since developers are very sought after and Tame had no money to pay the person. But networking and storytelling turned out to be the solution, Fischer tells.

“Networking is everything. No matter if you have money or not, in order to find really good people, you have to network like crazy. There’s no other way, because the competition is really hard out there”, he says.

But just talking to people of course isn’t enough. You need to have a story. When you’re at a conference or an event, it all comes down to whether you have a story to tell, because you have to give people a reason to listen to you.

“If you have a vision that really sounds appealing, then people will listen to you, and the media will write about you. And at that point you have a brand, and that brand is worth a lot, also a lot of money even”.

Reaching for The States
The story of Tame is so good, that Fischer and his partners have begun telling it in the US. As part of The German Silicon Valley Accelerator program, the founders went to San Francisco for three months to learn from the best in the industry.

Here, they had the opportunity to get mentors and expand their network. And so far it has been a success. During the stay they found a new investor, who is actually German, but has been living in San Francisco the last seven years.

“Now, he will go back to the US and set up an office there for us and try to find first of all new investors, which is way easier for someone who is from San Francisco or someone who has a network there”, says Frederik Fischer before he has to hang up and go back to the conference.

About Frederik Fischer:

• M.A. in Business and Finance Journalism from City University London, 2011.
• M.A. in Media Studies from Aarhus University, 2010.
• Fischer did his M.A. as part of the Erasmus Mundus Master in Journalism, Media and Globalisation, where you study one year in Aarhus and one year in a different European country.
• Fischer has five years of professional journalistic experience and has preciously worked as an HR Manager.
• Among other media he has worked for ARD, ZDF, Arte, 3sat, BR, Deutsche Welle, FTD, Zeit Online, TAZ, tape.tv and Business Punk.
• In 2012 he founded Tame with his colleagues Arno Dirlam and Torsten Müller.

Connect with Frederik Fischer on LinkedIn here.

If you want to learn more about Tame, you can watch their video to get a better understanding of what they want to do and how you can use it: (The video is mostly in German but with subtitles)