Nick Woodman is well known as the founder of GoPro, a camera designed primarily to help sports activities enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies get prominent and close-up videos.
They’re frequently used in water sports, skydiving, biking, etc. However, they also can be used as a general video camera and include various accessories to help fit in with the requirements of any extreme activity.
Nick Woodman’s net worth is now an estimated $300 million As of 2022, which is down by almost $2 billion from several years ago; after GoPro, share prices fell significantly. But how exactly did he come up with the idea of the GoPro, and how did he manipulate it to make it such a success?
Early Life
Nick Woodman was born on the 24th of June 1975 and raised in California, where he attended university and accomplished his degree in visual arts. The GoPro wasn’t the first business venture of Nick’s, as he’d previously attempted to construct companies.
The first was Empowerall.com, a website selling digital items for minimal markups. And the second one was Funbug, a gaming website that allowed people the chance to win cash prizes. Unfortunately, they were both failures, but they gave Nick the experience he had to succeed with GoPro.
Founding GoPro
After Woodman failed with his first startup, he determined to travel the world to move surfing. During his surfing tour in Australia and Indonesia, he attached a small 35mm camera to his hand using a rubber band to capture his videos while surfing.
Since many extreme sports enthusiasts like Nick Woodman are probably not professional photographers and have been struggling to capture high-quality recordings of their sports activities, that’s where Nick’s inspiration came for GoPro. Nick’s idea was to create a belt that the camera could attach to, which would then connect to your body.
Although, the first designs of the camera focused on wrist cameras which would be incredibly useful for anyone wishing to point and shoot while using both hands. Woodman had initially borrowed substantial money from his parents to launch the GoPro. To be precise, he $35,000 from his mother and $200,000 from his father.
GoPro cameras have now become a phenomenon for anybody who’s into sports or traveling, and not only are their wrist straps, but chest harnesses, head straps, water floats, and extending poles. You name it.
5 Success Lessons from Nick Woodman
Forbes published an excellent article outlining five startup lessons from Nick Woodman himself. These five lessons from Nick are:
Follow Your Passion: Woodman’s passion was to surf. He traveled around the world to surf, so he saw a need in the market for easy-to-use cameras for sporting activities. He came up with this idea simply by following his passion and knowing what people with similar interests to him would want. If you follow your passion, you’ll be able to identify the possible needs of people interested in the same things as you, and you’ll understand more about your target market.
Fear Failure: Nick had already had two of his startups fail, and this experience helped him out when founding GoPro. He was so worried that GoPro would end up like the other failed startups he made sure he worked like crazy to make it a success. This fear drove him to put 100�forts into GoPro and made him push himself toward success.
Obsess Over Your Product: Nick was fixated on his idea for the GoPro and spent every single waking minute trying to improve upon the idea, sitting at his desk drawing out designs and such. Obsess your product to make sure it becomes the best invention it could be.
Learn to Sell: Nick Woodman is a salesman and has taught himself how to chase and close deals over the years. It’s one thing to have a great product, but you need to be able to negotiate and sell your products.
Evolve or Die: It took a while for the GoPro cameras to get to the HD high pixel quality they’re at today. If they hadn’t been continuously evolving, they might have struggled to become the famous worldwide brand they are.