The GoPro is an excellent example of how product design can be hindered by an excessive feature list. The conventional wisdom is that consumers always want more features and removing features or failing to support the features your competition does is a recipe for business suicide. But the truth is that often times some features are not necessary and supporting them can serve as a roadblock toward developing other features or improving the core meta-features (usability, performance, robustness, cost, etc.) GoPro was smart enough to realize that there is a huge market for a camera which is not a jack of all trades, which is optimized to be compact, light, super easy to use, good for action shots or establishment shots and also inexpensive but not necessarily good for still photography, portraits, close-ups, low-light shots, etc. By making those compromises they were able to create a product that excelled in its niche, cemented its brand name, and destroyed the competition.
If you want to learn how to disrupt existing industries and build billion dollar companies from nothing, there are few better examples.
> a camera which is not a jack of all trades, which is optimized to be compact, light, super easy to use, good for action shots or establishment shots and also inexpensive but not necessarily good for still photography, portraits, close-ups, low-light shots, etc.
This sounds exactly like Flip (RIP). What do you think the difference was? The GoPro anti-shake technology & the ability to attach to helmets?
I think Flip was unlucky in that their releases coincided with the rise of smartphones, which took their lunch. When one device just takes video and costs around as much as an subsidized smartphone, there isn't any question which one I'm going to pick.
GoPro, though, wasn't hurt by the rise of smartphones. Surfers won't use smartphones for footage; they'll use the GoPro, since it's waterproof, has anti-shake, and other inportant features, targeted specifically at surfers.
Perhaps the moral is: when the rest of your industry is declining, focus on a niche, and execute well.
I think mostly it was that the flip didn't have sufficient feature differences from smartphones, as both were fairly limited in how you could use them, whereas the GoPro was more rugged, had waterproof housings, could takee longer videos, was mountable, etc. Also, the GoPro managed a high level of adoption in the extreme sports market which served as an effective endorsement system.
The flip probably could have found a new niche but cisco wasn't interested and basically let them be consumed by the advancement of technology.
Digital consumer video cameras predated GoPro by more than a decade, and the market was split between electronics giants. You wouldn't bet on a billion dollar company emerging from nowhere in THAT market, would you?
But, apparently, when you build a great brand, find a solid niche and make something consumers WANT to buy - as opposed to need to buy - great things can happen.
find a solid niche and make something consumers WANT to buy - as opposed to need to buy - great things can happen
I don't understand this comment. The food and pharmaceutical industries seem to be doing just fine, even though food and medicine are things that people need to buy.
Making something people want means you can have higher margins , means you can easily overcome customer loyalty to existing products or services overlapping with your offering and it means that people don't have to need your product to buy it. How many people need an extreme sports camera? How many want it?
The lesson here is that even seemingly established markets still contain a large value for people who get it right.
Just noting that based on the valuation of the company he is a billionaire, but GoPro is still a privately held business, so he [probably] doesn't have that sort of money on hand or available as short/safe investments.
There are rumors of a GoPro IPO early next spring though[1], so he may have the cash very soon.
Just noting that based on the valuation of the company he is a billionaire, but GoPro is still a privately held business, so he [probably] doesn't have that sort of money on hand or available as short/safe investments.
Kind of standard for most billionaires (or even millionaires) no?
The article doesn't get into details about the structure of the deal -- the $200M could be invested in the company (i.e., a dilutive event for shareholders), rather than a simple stock purchase. I'd guess that it's probably some mix of the two.
To invest indirectly in GoPro, there's Ambarella which IPO'd some months ago. They make imaging processors used in most GoPro cameras such as the Hero2 and Hero3 models.
Congratulations to Gopro. They basically created the market of action cams. The dinosaurs Sony, Nikon, Canon are seeing their hegemony erode because of the incredible vision and product design of Gopro.
One interesting thing is that we are seeing a huge amount of "fisheye" videos now because of Gopro. Where it was once an extremely gimmicky kind of image, now it is becoming much more normal to see. And in certain situations (surfing, skiing) it really makes sense.
It's kind of interesting you mention that because the one place that fisheye lens videos WERE extremely common in previous decades has been in extreme sports videos- especially skateboarding videos.
pg says that founders should be relentlessly resourceful. Well GoPro founder Nick Woodman is definitely resourceful: he raised initial capital ($30k) partially by selling bead-and-shell necklaces! http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/gopros-incredible-small...
Did anyone else take notice of the percentage stake being 8.88%? It's interesting because eight is a lucky number in China where the buyer is located. I haven't noticed such a blatant use of this particular superstition in a western business deal before.
You don't just buy a GoPro, you buy all the accessories too. I bought a Hero 3 Black last month, my first GoPro and found myself spending almost as much on accessories (LCD, batteries, mounts,etc.) as I did on the camera. I would think thats where they make most of their money being that its cheap to manufacture a couple pieces of plastic that sells for $40.
I don't do any sports, I'm not really interested in photography but a GoPro is something I always wanted.
I used it to record the plane landing as I came home from vacation and even use it to record my kids in the backseat while driving. It's a fun camera and congrats to woodman.
I've used GoPros a few times on road trips, and they are fantastic.
I did a time lapse of 5 days driving through the South-West on one occasion, and new SLC on another, and the picture quality is great, and its time lapse functionality is really amazing. The only problem is that it generates a lot of data... I had to scale down from 1 pic per second to 1 pic every 10s, and I still had about 30GB of data. Anyone considering using the GoPro for time lapse, though, 1s frequency is what you want for a smooth video afterwards, 10s is too coarse and it gets really jumpy.
I've used every GoPro camera made, minus the first film camera they started with. I love them, but I also tend to hate them at times too. I've had to RMA about three of them, and my friends have had issues too. Hopefully they can put their massive popularity and growth (money) back into the product to make it more stable and robust. They've really created an awesome product when it works well. I know that if someone came up with a product that worked flawlessly every time, they could chip away at GoPro's market share.
What prevents a serious camera company like Nikon or Canon from rolling and and owning this market? Is a couple $bn not enough to get them out of bed in the morning?
They never saw the market. They didn't even know it existed.
Woodman is a surfer—the market was right in front of him. He saw a need, and he solved it with a very simple, high quality device tailored to that specific need.
A better argument there has never been for solving real problems with real solutions, rather than trying to essentially trick people into believing they both have a problem and need a solution. The latter is possible, but the former is a far better path to success.
The funny thing is that Canon, in particular, pretty much stumbled into pro/prosumer video and has done very well with it. Whether it causes itself harm by starting to try to deliberately segment its video and stills/prosumer video market remains to be seen.
But, yeah, they weren't aiming for the sports video market and they don't especially have a brand there. Actually, neither Nikon nor Canon have an especial brand in even waterproof cameras. (Canon does have one--only recently updated--Nikon AFAIK does not.) The point about getting out of bed in the morning is probably relevant. You get to a certain size of company and even large niches aren't especially interesting.
They never took it seriously to begin with, and now that its clear that this is a serious market, they're too late. I wouldn't put it past them to invest additionally in GoPro (or some competitor).
A competitor is Conture. Search devinsupertramp on YouTube to see a few videos they have sponsored him to make with the cameras. I think one is of a blob.
There are competitors, but none of them are a threat. The Contour has some traction, and the Sony ActionCam is pretty decent spec-wise, but nothing compares to the GoPro HD3 Black edition: 120FPS @ 720p, 240FPS @ WVGA, and even 30FPS @ 2.7k. They are still a generation or two ahead of their competitors.
The only thing I wish the HD3 Black had was GPS so that you could geotag your videos. That's about the biggest missing piece to that camera, otherwise it would be perfect.
Apart from the 2.7K mode (where would that be useful) the Sony matches the specs you mention. Specs aren't everything and I haven't tried either product. Go Pro has the better accessory ecosystem at the moment and may still be the better product in many ways.
I really like the look and design of contour's latest model (Contour +2), but having seen the user reviews on Amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, I feel that for me the software quality and functionality issues mean that I just won't buy it, unless this is greatly improved.
Specs aren't everything, you can compete on price. Lots of these alternatives are MUCH cheaper than GoPros. 99% of people don't even know of resolutions higher than HD, and 99.9% wouldn't know what to do with them - there are no affordable 4K TVs yet, it will take a few years.
It would require a serious investment to make a camera that would exceed GoPro in terms of quality and reliability, and then even more investment in marketing to get some sort of consumer mindshare. All of this for a market that is something like 5-10% of their point and shoot market. It's the type of gamble most companies aren't willing to make.
For reference: Cisco bought Pure Digital, an SF-based startup that created the Flip camera line, for $590 million in 2009, only to shut them down completely 2 years later:
That episode may be more a reflection on Cisco's confusion than anything wrong with the original product/market. (Perhaps with a less neglectful acquirer, Flip would have been a worthy competitor to GoPro.)
> Perhaps with a less neglectful acquirer, Flip would have been a worthy competitor to GoPro.
It'd have to flip mightily, Pure Digital did consumer "point and shoot" cameras, gopro does actioncams. They're the same thing only in that both are cameras (and then again, so are RED, would you argue RED is going to become a gopro competitor?)
Flip and GoPro both offer(ed) <$500 rechargeable compact consumer HD cameras through electronics retailers. You can find a number of discussions where buyers were weighing them against each other.
So it's not far-fetched they'd have become more direct competitors, with some sort of 'Action Flip' arriving, if Cisco hadn't essentially given up on retail/consumer video.
(Red differs in form-factor, feature set, pricing, target market, and distribution channel, so no, the same ripe potential for competition with GoPro isn't present.)
AFAIK GoPro 3 is using Sony sensors, yet Sony can't seem to get it's act together to produce a decent GoPro competitor (ActionCam).
My money long term is on high quality sensors from Sony etc. running on Android, and h.265 for higher resolutions/framerates rivaling offerings from GoPro and RED. Give it 1-2 years.
FunBug was "designed to drive consumer traffic and spending to online and offline client businesses" via games & sweepstakes.
His FunBug co-founder, Stephen Baumer, is the current CTO of GoPro.
Woodman credits FunBug's failure as partial inspiration for GoPro in that he wanted to pursue something he was genuinely passionate about.
So what?
Don't give up on the dream, fail fast and fail big, keep your best people close, and build stuff you wish existed.
Good stuff to think about with the new year around the corner.
1 - http://www.dmnews.com/funbugcom-looks-to-infest-the-net/arti...
2 - http://web.archive.org/web/20001017210942/http://www.funbug....