Our Story

We believe that how we shape our collective stories determines how we shape our world. In the recent past, journalists and documentaries have played the role of shaping our world. But journalism missed the train when the internet happened, and today, journalism is trapped in old formats and locked behind paywalls. Future generations are never going to go to journalism websites. Instead, their only option is social media, built for advertising, not enlightenment. It’s undermining our shared humanity and destabilizing our societies and democracies. Duckling brings an alternative.

A social benefit corporation

Duckling is more than a regular commercial company. We are a mission-driven startup that wants to create inspiration, positivity, and enlightenment for future generations with a new approach to media. Having revenue from paying customers and having access to investors will give us the best path to impacting the world. Still, we also see a massive problem in the business models of big tech and in the way unlimited growth is hurting the planet. We made our legal entity “Duckling Media ApS,” a social benefit corporation governed by Danish law.

This means that the money we make will stay in Duckling and serve our purpose of empowering the next generation with excellent documentary storytelling and journalism. Our startup journey so far has been founded by the state-owned Innovation Fund Denmark, the German government-backed Media Lift program, and the private Danish impact investor Niels Christiansen. We are proud to be independent from big tech and other interests and plan to keep it that way. This independence allows us to prioritize our mission and values over profit, ensuring our content remains authentic, insightful, and free from external influence. This commitment to independence is crucial for the future of media and our ability to impact society positively.

Two danish founders

Two Danish entrepreneurs, Bjarke Calvin Vinding and Kamilla Gamborg Isaksen, founded Duckling with a deep-rooted passion for the intersection of media, technology, and business. Bjarke, a former executive editor with Magnum Photos in New York City and an alumnus of MIT Open Doclab, and Kamilla, who created youth content for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and a regional Danish broadcaster, met as fellows at Constructive Institute. Their shared vision and inspiration from the Scandinavian welfare model, the coop tradition, and the folk high school movement, mixed with the innovative tech startup spirit of the US, led to the birth of Duckling.

Healthy screentime

There is an increasing focus on kids’ screen time because more and more teenagers become addicted to social media, with dire consequences for their well-being and health. At Duckling, we want to shift focus away from the amount of time and look at how our kids use the screen time. If you spend time looking at documentaries that make you insightful and civilized, it’s a different story than if you spend time looking at fake news on TikTok. It’s also about balance. We like social media, but it can’t stand alone. We are committed to promoting a healthy digital lifestyle.

Data for Humanity

To build the future of documentary, Duckling is rethinking five central elements of media: creation, ownership, monetization, discovery, and verification. We are using a mix of trained community editors and AI to surface and verify inspirational, positive, and enlightening stories. We are creating a platform to ensure that creators own their stories and have control over how their content is used and monetized. In other words, we are making data and technology enrich and empower all of humanity.

Inspired, positive, enlightened

Stories not only shape our world, they shape us. They shape you. They can make us fearful, ignorant, and selfish – or they can make us hopeful about the future, conscious about the world, and happy with our true selves. At Duckling, we are convinced that building a media that promotes the latter is possible. We envision a platform where you can find stories that inspire you to take action on climate change, documentaries that deepen your understanding of global issues, and journalism that challenges your perspectives. If it were possible in the early days of journalism, it would also be possible in the Internet age. We are committed to creating a media that empowers, enlightens, and inspires, and we invite you to join us on this journey.