People are watching GoPro content not to decide whether they should buy it or not - they're watching it for the entertainment.
— Nick Woodman
I think that devices like Glass are going to do a terrific job of capturing your first-person perspective. And that's what people first think of when they think of GoPro.
I'll let myself obsess over things.
Keeping people fired up starts with having a really clear vision for what the company is aiming to do.
My friends used to tease me 'cause I'd wear a CamelBak while I was working so I wouldn't have to get up if I was thirsty.
When I got out of college, I gave myself till I was 30 to invent a product. If I couldn't do it by then, I would just get a real job. And that fear - the fear of a real job - motivated me to be an entrepreneur.
When I think about dropping team sports and picking up surfing and also then geeking out radio control planes and gadgetry and all that stuff I love, that's what really now has led me in big part to GoPro.
People use GoPros to capture the experiences they are passionate about.
I think our slow, humble beginnings in surf shops, ski shops, bike shops, and motorcycle shops have been extremely important for our success. GoPro is all about celebrating an active lifestyle and sharing that with other people. It's authentic. It's not a brand that we went out and bought a bunch of ads for to create.
Bootstrapping allows you total creative freedom. For example, if you decide to approach your business in a certain way that makes it a two- or three-year process to get to your first product, you can do that, versus being rushed into it by investors.
My first business was a retro-gaming site where you'd go and play all these cool old-school games. It was a good idea but ahead of its time.
If I didn't follow my passion for surfing... I would have never come up with the concept to make a wrist camera.
Disney produces fabulous movies around certain characters, and then they commercialize that engagement through toys, books, cruises.
GoPro is ideal for pro-active capture, meaning, 'Hey, we're going to do something fun, and we're going to capture a video of it.'
Everyone has an idea over time of what the business should be, and during the formative period, too many opinions could be disruptive.
I come into work late morning time and go at it until early evening, and I'm lucky that I'm at the point where I'm able to do that.
It sounds cheesy, but if you are having fun, people will love your company, you will be more successful, and more ideas will come your way.
I can sell anything that I totally believe in, but I'm a horrible salesman of something I don't believe in.
I feel like in a world where we all try to figure out our place and our purpose here, your passions are one of your most obvious guides.
If I'm a content creator, and I get recognition for my work, that's going to motivate me to spend even more time on my next production and make it even better.
It's very difficult to get any footage of yourself doing what you love unless you have a friend who's a photographer or videographer and wants to document you. That was really the idea and the goal from the beginning: to help people get a good photo, and then it was to help people get a good video.
I realized that a surf trip on a jet can be like a road trip. If you see a road you want to turn down, you can just go there.
When I have a difficult decision to make, I imagine myself as a 90-year-old guy looking back on his life. I imagine what I'll think about myself at that point in time, and it always makes it really easy to go for it. You're only going to regret that you wimped out.
On the road and traveling - that's when people are at their most creative.
Fear drives you a lot harder than success does.
Smartphones are always in your pocket. They're about reactive capture.
You know what the best thing about morning ski trips are? McDonald's!
I don't want to wake up and see my kids going off to college and wonder what happened.
I want to want to go to work in the morning.
To get GoPro started, I moved back in with my parents and went to work seven days a week, 20 hours a day. I wrote off my personal life to make headway on it.
Before GoPro, if you wanted to have any footage of yourself doing anything, whether it's video or photo, you not only needed a camera, you needed another human being. And if you wanted the footage to be good, you needed that other human being to have skill with the camera.
I didn't want to take anybody else's money. I wanted to do something small that could be profitable from the beginning, and grow that way - and never need someone to write me a check to keep the business going.
I originally started GoPro with the sole purpose of helping surfers capture photos of themselves and their friends while they were surfing. I thought it was crazy that very few surfers had any photos or videos of themselves.
I get pretty focused when I start working on something. And I drink a lot of water, way more than most people.
If we can become the de facto standard for image capture of unique perspectives around the world, we have a lot of growth ahead of us.
