GoPro Evolution: From 35mm Film To America's Fastest-Growing Camera Company - Forbes

A shot from GoPro's original 35mm Hero, which used film. (Photo courtesy of GoPro)

GoPro is quickly becoming a household name. In the 10 years since he created the firm in October 2002, Nick Woodman has gone from sleeping out of his 1971 Volkswagen Bus and peddling 35mm film cameras to leading the nation’s fastest-growing camera company. He is now a billionaire, worth $1.3 billion, based on Foxconn’s $200 million investment in his company at a $2.25 billion valuation.

While friends remember Woodman as someone who thought his cameras would make him a millionaire (see FORBES’ March magazine story here), GoPro’s founder and CEO is the first to admit his company wasn’t an immediate winner. “It was a classic 10-year overnight success case,” he jokes.

Woodman conceived the idea in 2001 simply as a wrist strap that could tether already-existing cameras to surfers. After testing his first makeshift models on a surf trip to Australia and Indonesia, he later realized he would have to manufacture the camera, its housing and the strap all together.

Fast-forward a decade later and GoPro now has the highest-selling point-of-view camera on the market. Unlike the first version, which was a 35mm film camera, the company’s newest product, the HD Hero3, shoots panoramic, high-definition video that has become the standard in capturing action sports. In the first half of 2012, GoPro was responsible for 21.5% of digital camcorder shipments nationwide, up from a 6% market share the year before, according to IDC data.

In parsing the success of GoPro, Woodman points to his company’s aggressive marketing and social media strategy as well as the constant consumer technology advancements. He also says the company was in the right place at the right time. GoPro took advantage of period when smartphones were making traditional digital cameras and camcorders obsolete–a realization that hit Cisco before it shuttered its Flip Camera business in 2011.

“Consumers are no longer spending their money on point-and-shoot cameras–pocket cameras–because they already have that in the form of their smartphone,” says Woodman. “So they have disposable income for something like a GoPro, which is highly differentiated from a smartphone.”

While skeptics are unsure of whether smartphones can stay out of GoPro’s territory, Woodman says that the two devices are built to coexist, especially as his company builds out its WiFi capabilities and smartphone applications. GoPro’s CEO also says his company isn’t standing still.

“We’re in our 11th year at GoPro and have confidence in our vision of the future,” he says. “We’re building solutions that enable people to capture and share life experiences… and as a result GoPro is growing virally via [users'] content creation and sharing.”

Interactive graphic created by Nina Gould and Ryan Mac.

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