Nick Woodman: Make me a camera so that I can shoot while skydiving or falling from a waterfall...

Since its launch in 2004, GoPro has managed to double its sales each year. In 2012, the company sold 2.3 million cameras and earned $521 million from these sales. This showed that it left behind even a well-established brand like Sony, which has been at the top since its inception. According to the information given by the company IDC, which is famous for its market research, GoPro, which has a history of only 10 years, closed the first half of 2012 with 21.5% of international video camera sales. This ratio was even higher when pocket cameras were taken into account.

Thanks to its rapid growth and its determination to maintain its position, the company has signed a radical business deal with Chinese electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision. The Chinese company known as Foxconn has invested $200 million in GoPro. This investment increased the value of the Silicon Valley company by $2.25 billion.

How Did the GoPro Idea Come to Life?

The youngest in a family of four children, Woodman had thoughtful plans in the back of his mind. It could even be said that he was chasing a cunning most of the time. Growing up in Atherton, the affluent and glamorous borough of Silicon Valley (his father was instrumental in Pepsi's acquisition of Taco Bell), he was a highly self-confident boy who was never afraid to defy the authorities. Here's how Woodman's baseball coach and history teacher describes him: “He used to walk around with a smile on his face, it's a big smile that sometimes shows his happiness; sometimes it would be a sneaky and contrived expression. Sometimes I thought he was really happy, other times he was like, "I'm happy because I'm planning something". He once even made a $5 bet with his biology teacher that he could run a mile in 6 minutes; The result was 5.40 seconds, just as he predicted.”

Woodman was more into sports than books: His grades were B+, and his college exam performance wasn't particularly good. He was in love with the waves, so he chose the University of California, San Diego for its proximity to the sun and salty water: “I remember my parents weren't very supportive of me on this one. But if I hadn't followed my passion for surfing, I would never have considered the idea of ​​producing a wrist camera.”

The idea came to him for the first time when Funbug, the online gaming site he founded after college, went bankrupt in 2001 and took his investors' 3.9 million dollars with him: “I don't remember failing this much in anything other than computer engineering courses. The situation was clear, I was badly defeated; Now was the time to accept it, I was thinking maybe I wasn't right for the job.”

Woodman, who went on a surfing holiday to Australia and Indonesia to clear his head, made a broken surfboard strap with him on his return; He introduced an interesting mechanism in which he managed to attach the Kodak camera to his wrist using plastic bands. His close friend Brad Schmidt, who is currently the head of design at GoPro, was among the first to try this new toy by meeting with Woodman during his holiday in Indonesia. The first observation he made was that Woodman needed a camera that was durable enough to cope with the eroding effects of the sea. Recharged after five months of surf lounging, Woodman returns to California with the seeds of a new idea.

Woodman was then 27 years old. Closed home; He isolated himself from his normal life, friends and even family and confined himself to his tiny room to prepare his first product samples. He had decided to stick with his new idea and sell straps, cameras, and cases.

GoPro made $350,000 worth of sales in its first year. Young entrepreneur; He was trying to carry out the duties of being the creator, engineer, seller, R&D specialist and packaging manager of the product together.

Woodman's venture, which he hid from everyone, continued to grow. He wanted to keep this job as private as possible so that he could pass the product test and get Lotus certificate and not have to be held accountable to any management for his work. Woodman started with $30,000, then moved on with $35,000 from his mother and $100,000 from his father twice. Forbes estimates the company's profit rate today is around 15%.

The famous entrepreneur aims to make GoPro an ever-necessary 'bedside product', just like in the band-aid or ear cleaning stick industries. In other words, there is a desire to monopolize and it is a fact that this goal has been achieved to a large extent.

A bigger challenge awaits GoPro now, it has to compete with big companies. For example, Sony released its first action camera in September 2012. Relying on its camera in terms of image balance and video sound, Sony thus signals that GoPro will close the gap at two points where it has the biggest shortcoming.

Woodman believes that the market they have created is strong enough to accommodate many companies. He also stresses that the fact that they outperformed Sony in December Best Buy sales only made him happy: “Sony was defeated for the first time and GoPro did it? This is truly excellent!”