Colin Kaepernick lost control of his story. Now he wants to help creators own theirs

 

Thousands of stories have been written about former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. If anyone knows a thing or two about losing control of your own narrative, it’s him. Now Kaepernick is launching an AI storytelling platform, Lumi, to help creators tell and own their stories.

If you said, “Huh?” when reading that, I wouldn’t blame you. But the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback has more expertise here than you might realize. First off, Kaepernick says this is a solution for storytellers, and generative AI is merely a tool to get there. Kaepernick spent the last 10 years building a media company, Kaepernick Media, which exposed him to some of the media industry’s deeply entrenched problems. He’s also served on Medium’s board since 2020. Lumi attempts to address issues like gatekeeping, production costs, and creatives losing ownership of their work. The solution is not revolutionary — an AI subscription, a distribution platform, and a revenue share plan — but the implementation might be.

Kaepernick made headlines during the 2016 NFL season, not for his passer rating, but for kneeling during the national anthem before football games. It was a protest to civil injustices against Black people, but many took his kneel to be disrespectful. At the time, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said, “I don’t necessarily agree with what he’s doing,” while others, including former President Trump, said worse. After leaving the 49ers, Kaepernick struggled to land with another team despite leading San Francisco to a Super Bowl a few years earlier, leading to suspicions he’d been blackballed by NFL owners.

“On my own story — the impact and implications of other people creating their narratives around it and telling it from their perspective — why should that be the case?” said Kaepernick in an interview with TechCrunch. “There are times in the past where I could have jumped out and told my story in different ways, but I try to be thoughtful of how I’m building things and why I’m doing them. If it’s something that is just self-interested or self-fulfilling, that doesn’t particularly interest me.”

But with Lumi, Kaepernick sees an opportunity to empower storytellers more broadly. He may release a story on the platform himself, but that’s not quite the point. Kaepernick’s difficulties with the media industry have greatly impacted his own life, but now he’s using the lesson to create a solution larger than himself.

On Wednesday, Lumi is emerging from stealth with $4 million in seed funding led by Seven Seven Six. The company is also allowing creators to sign up for its beta version today.

Cool! So what is it?

Kaepernick ultimately sees Lumi as an end-to-end media company — venturing into video eventually — offering creator tools, a distribution platform, publishing and merchandising services. For now, Lumi is starting small with creator tools for comic book illustrators, specifically the Japanese style, manga.