GoPro exists because Nick Woodman went surfing. Seriously. He was on a trip to Indonesia in 2002 and got frustrated that he couldn't get good photos of himself riding waves. So he started working on a solution.
Before that, Woodman had already tried and failed at a couple of startups. He's been pretty open about this. The failures stung, but they also taught him a lot about what not to do. When he started GoPro in 2004, he bootstrapped it, even selling bead and shell belts out of his VW van to fund the early days. The first camera was a 35mm film camera you could strap to your wrist.
It took off. Surfers loved it. Snowboarders loved it. Skydivers, mountain bikers, anyone doing anything remotely adventurous wanted one. GoPro basically created the action camera category and turned user-generated extreme sports footage into its own genre of content online. The company went public in 2014, and at its peak Woodman was one of the highest-paid CEOs in America.
The road hasn't been entirely smooth. GoPro's stock took a hit in later years as smartphones got better cameras and competition increased. But the company has stuck around and adapted, which says something.
As a guest shark on Shark Tank, Woodman knows what it's like to go from selling stuff out of a van to running a public company. He's lived through the highs and the lows and that gives him a different kind of credibility when he's sitting across from an entrepreneur who's still figuring things out.
A few milestones:
- Founded GoPro in 2004, essentially creating the action camera market
- Took GoPro public in 2014
- Built a product category that changed how people document adventures