The rise and fall

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Curated by: Michael Girdley (151 videos)


Currently Playing: Why nobody buys GoPro products anymore

Thanks to Lease End for partnering with me on this video: https://www.leaseend.com/michael-girldey?utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=michael-girldey If your car lease is coming up, Lease End helps you understand what your car is worth, compare that against the residual value in your lease, and see whether buying it out actually makes financial sense. If a buyout makes sense, Lease End can help handle it remotely, shop multiple banks for financing, and take care of the paperwork without forcing you back into the dealership. If you’re struggling to find great people, check out Near. They help companies hire top talent so you can build the team you need to grow: https://links.girdley.com/near3 GoPro went from a surfer's idea to America's best-selling camera brand and an $11 billion company. In this business breakdown, I look at how Nick Woodman built GoPro, why its explosive growth masked serious weaknesses in the business, and how failed expansion, smartphones, stronger competitors, and a limited market helped turn one of the hottest consumer brands in America into a company that lost roughly 97% of its value. Get the 2-minute cheat sheet for this video → https://girdley.com/youtube 👇 SUBSCRIBE for more business breakdowns https://www.youtube.com/@Michael-Girdley?sub_confirmation=1 ► Get my weekly letter to business owners: essential insights to run, grow, and stay ahead in your business → https://links.girdley.com/newsletter-yt ► For sponsorships or inquiries please reach out to: Contact@girdley.com ► Do you have a hat I should wear in a video? Send it to us: Contact@girdley.com ► Free events on all things small business: https://links.girdley.com/lectures-yt ► Deep dives on businesses for sale: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast ► Follow me on Twitter/X: https://x.com/girdley The rise and fall of GoPro starts with Nick Woodman trying to solve his own problem. While surfing, he wanted a better way to capture himself in action. That idea eventually became GoPro, and after the company moved from its early 35mm camera into digital video, it found an enormous tailwind in YouTube. Customers weren't just buying GoPros—they were creating and distributing GoPro's marketing for free. By 2013, GoPro was the best-selling camera brand in the United States, and in 2014 the company reached an $11 billion valuation. But underneath that growth was a fundamental problem. GoPro was still largely a single-product hardware company operating in a relatively limited action-camera market. Customers could keep their cameras for years, smartphones were getting better, and cheaper competitors could increasingly make cameras that were good enough. Investors were betting that GoPro would become much more: a media company with its own content business and a broader ecosystem built around software and subscriptions. That vision never developed fast enough. Then the execution problems started piling up. The Hero4 Session struggled, GoPro's software was criticized, and unsold inventory led to major charges. Its attempt to become an entertainment company went nowhere. GoPro then entered drones with Karma, only to face DJI's Mavic and recall its own drone shortly after launch because of a hardware problem that could cause drones to lose power. Meanwhile, smartphones and competitors including DJI and Insta360 kept improving. By January 2018, GoPro had exited the drone business. GoPro eventually found a promising recurring-revenue business in subscriptions, generating more than $100 million annually in subscription revenue in later years. But that lifeboat arrived after the core hardware business had already weakened. Revenue, which peaked at $1.62 billion in 2015, fell below $1 billion by 2023 and toward $800 million in 2024. The story of what happened to GoPro isn't simply about cheap cameras or smartphones—it is about failing to build a durable moat while the original product was still dominant. For founders and operators, the deeper lesson is about timing and risk. Woodman's experience losing investors' money in his earlier startup shaped how he approached GoPro. In the video, I explore how that scar tissue may have contributed to a conservative approach at the exact moments when GoPro needed to take bigger swings to protect its position. The GoPro documentary is ultimately a case study in how explosive growth can disguise a narrow market, how first-mover advantage can disappear, and why a great product isn't automatically a durable business.


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