>>Nick Woodman: The inspiration, well, I was an out-of-work entrepreneur.
I was 26 years old.
In my first business I failed.
And -- >>Morgan Spurlock: This room is filled with
out-of-work entrepreneurs.
[ Laughter ] >>Nick Woodman: And I had no inspiration for
what I wanted to do next.
And so I decided -- I had a little bit of money saved up, and I decided to go surfing
and pursue my passion because I think when people are pursuing their passions, they're
turned on, especially when travel is involved and you are out in the world meeting people.
And I wanted to document this five-month surf trip around Australia and Indonesia.
So I went to work on a camera where I could surf with, wear on my wrist.
And the irony is inspiration for GoPro for my business came before I even left.
And it was the development of this camera turned this surf trip into an R&D trip.
And that was the first surf trip I ever came home back from excited to come home, was to
go build this business around helping at the time surfers document their experience in
the water while they're surfing.
And it is a very difficult thing, a very beautiful, magical human experience that before GoPro
was next to impossible to document while you're doing it.
And that led to GoPro, which is now in the business of helping people self-document their
lives and share life experiences with ease that was never before possible.
Like Matthias sharing his experience ski B.A.S.E.
jumping.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Well, it seems like this is the community, I feel like, that embraced
it first.
I feel like, almost like this X Games community, this extreme sports community, surfers, BMX
riders, skiers, these were the guys who were using it more than anything because suddenly
they could document this POB in a way that was never done before.
Did you go after those people as a surfer or did they just automatically adopt it on
their own?
>>Nick Woodman: We were lucky because we first targeted surfing, which is a very passionate
group of people, very passionate, active group of consumers, world travelers.
And they're out doing things.
And what we recognized early on is that passionate people, very active people, are engaged in
very interesting activities that make for terrific stories.
And if you enable them to self-document their life experiences, the result is you get some
fantastically engaging stories.
And when these people become your first customers, and the stories that they tell are that interesting,
the whole world wants to hear them.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Yeah.
>>Nick Woodman: And then the whole world becomes aware of GoPro in the process because these
early tip-of-the-spear customers are so stoked that you, GoPro, has enabled them to finally
capture and share these life experiences that they give you credit for it.
So that's why you see so many GoPro videos, customer videos, tag titled or described as
being shot on GoPro, both I think because the brand is very cool and people want to
be associated with it but also they want to give credit where credit is due.
And they're so emotionally attached to their GoPros because their GoPro makes them feel
berygood about themselves because it enables to share these stories and it also enables
them to look incredibly good doing it.
It is really important that you help your customer look good because then they love
you for that.
And most people are not used to seeing themselves on a big screen.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Suddenly you are bigger than life.
>>Nick Woodman: Yeah, or doing anything.
You know, what's made GoPro so different than any other camera company before it is that
we have enabled people to self-document their life and themselves at the center of the stage,
living their life.
Before GoPro, people had very little footage of themselves doing anything.
You had the before and after shot, you know, standing in the parking lot with your arms
around each other.
But what the heck did you just go do?
I don't know.
There is no footage of it, right?
>>Morgan Spurlock: Right.
>>Nick Woodman: GoPro has enabled the documentation, the story telling of the actual event that
is your life, these terrific life experiences.
And these are not just jumping off cliffs.
There's the birth of your children.
There is the first bike ride we talked about with your kids.
I have two kids now so I'm totally focused on family.
But before GoPro, if you wanted any footage of yourself doing anything, you needed not
only a camera, you needed another human being to hold that camera and film you.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Yeah.
>>Nick Woodman: Then you needed that human to have some skill with the camera if you
wanted the footage to be any good.
And then you needed that human with skill and the camera to -- you need their calendar
to match yours so that they would be available to film you.
So you had all of these pain points stacked up and the result was that people didn't have
any content of themselves doing anything.
We've enabled that.
And then you uncork this -- the -- open the flood gates of incredible user-generated stories
waiting to be told.
>>Morgan Spurlock: What I love about it is how -- I love how it's been so adopted by
so many people.
The film they just talked, that Campbell talked about, that opened Labor Day weekend, we used
that while shooting the film.
Thank you.
Blow it up.
See, we are blowing it up on stage.
Mark Burnett is going come up here in just a minute.
He uses it throughout his show on "Survivor."
It has really become a part of production mainstream.
I mean, for you, is that the success, the fact that it has suddenly become so -- Just
to give you guys an idea, GoPro is the number one selling camera on the planet.
This thing that he created on a surf trip a few years ago is now the number one prosumer,
consumer camera on earth.
>>Nick Woodman: Thanks to guys like this.
>>Morgan Spurlock: I mean, when you look at that, the fact that it is now being adopted
by actual productions and it is not just athletes or it is not just some guy at home, is that
success?
>>Nick Woodman: I mean, absolutely.
I mean, people ask me how does it feel.
And my answer is that it's total dream time.
GoPro is much bigger than we'd ever imagine.
I mean, to be clear, we started out to help surfers document their experience in the water.
>>Morgan Spurlock: I think you have done that.
>>Nick Woodman: And one thing has led to the next.
And now I think GoPro is as successful as it is because we are the most enabling capture
device in the world -- >>Morgan Spurlock: Yeah.
>>Nick Woodman: -- and the most versatile.
And so when you help everybody capture and share life experiences, whether that's personal
ones like Matthias or whether that's professional experiences that Mark Burnett or yourself
would be using in your professional work, a versatile capture device is a versatile
capture device.
And if it helps people tell better stories, then that mass adoption, I think, is really
what's made us successful.
And I will say that one thing that feels really neat is that a GoPro is --
>>Morgan Spurlock: This big.
>>Nick Woodman: Well, yeah.
You know, people didn't take it seriously at first because how can something this small
enable what it does?
But that the same device that a 12-year-old surfer goes and buys off the shelf at a surf
shop is the same camera that Matthias uses in his work and is the same camera that you
fellows use in your professional work and it's also the best-selling camera in the world
for production companies.
>>Morgan Spurlock: How many people here own a GoPro?
Anybody have one?
Who has one?
Look at that.
That's amazing.
It's amazing.
And what we were talking about back stage, what I think is the greatest accomplishment
of this, beyond that, personally, is how many people are doing what you said and using them
to document really personal things in their lives.
Like, I love the shot where somebody is throwing the baby up in the air and catching the baby
and you are getting that crazy rock-star slow-mo shot of the baby going up and down because
we have never really had the ability to capture those really wonderful, personal moments in
this way before.
And I think it's a -- that's a really unique transition that's happened.
>>Nick Woodman: And, also, helping people turn these moments into engaging content that
other people want to watch, right?
>>Morgan Spurlock: We've all had the bad home movie experience.
>>Nick Woodman: Yeah, nobody really wants to watch that.
Again, this gets back to the importance of helping your customer look really good in
their content.
They'll want to watch it.
But then the wider audience, you know, the world at-large is interested in watching it,
and you can take what otherwise is maybe a -- for many, a mundane experience unless you
are the parents of that child and turn that into really engaging content that other people
want to watch.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Yeah.
>>Nick Woodman: And, you know, that may be one of the most successful "my baby walking
around our apartment" videos of all time.
And we ended up turning that into a super bowl commercial just because it was so cute.
That was a customer of ours from the Midwest that the video went viral on YouTube and became,
you know, professional quality content.
And I think that's really exciting because when you enable passionate people in the world
to create -- you know, regular, everyday people, humans, to create professional quality engaging
content from their own passions, you enable the world's largest production force of what
we call professional quality user-generated content, PUGC.
That's really powerful because if your tool is what's enabling them to create and share
these incredible stories and they are often giving you credit for it, together you're
crowdsourcing one of the great consumer brands of our time.
And you're also crowdsourcing a new form of media company in which all of this incredible
content is created from one like device that's, you know -- happens to be the best-selling
camera in consumer and professional markets.
And to build a media brand from a single device like that, I don't think it's ever been done
before.
And it's thanks entirely to our customers around the world and on platform like YouTube.
Very lucky timing.
>>Morgan Spurlock: When was the moment you knew you had something that was really special?
Something that was completely going to change things?
>>Nick Woodman: There have been so many moments.
But I think we knew that -- One of the goals early on at GoPro was to make a camera that
captured content of such quality it was worthy it could get somebody on the cover of a magazine,
of a surf magazine.
That was sort of our first goal.
And then as we got into video, it was to make a camera that was worthy of producing professional
content that film and TV producers would use because, my God, if we could do that and put
that performance and ease of use in the hands of the everyday consumer, we could enable
this professional quality user-generated content that I spoke about.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Yeah.
>>Nick Woodman: And I think that when we first -- when we saw the first footage come off
of the HD Hero and how incredible it was, I mean, it was like, life.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Yeah.
>>Nick Woodman: That was -- And, remember, I sent it to a friend of mine who was at UCLA
Film School and I said, I need you to test this out.
And I don't have time to go on a surf trip anymore to capture footage for a promotional
video launch.
I need you to go use this.
And he had used the camera a few times in previous generations.
He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, change everything.
Camera.
Okay, I got it.
I have heard this before.
I FedEx'd it to him.
And he called me the next day pacing up and down the sidewalk saying, "You don't understand.
This camera is going to change everything!"
And I said, "I know, I know!
That's what I told you!"
But I think that a kid in the U.K., James Trosh, built a weather balloon with his dad.
Put a red robot at one end of the weather balloon and put his GoPro at the other end
of the where are balloon and he sent it up into near space.
We saw the video on YouTube.
And it was amazing, and he had taken us somewhere we had never been before which was near space.
And it was so cute with this little red robot.
And that completely surprised everybody at the company, and it was one of the earliest
indicators of this camera can go anywhere and unlock perspectives of life that have
never been seen before.
And individuals can create Academy Award-winning content by mounting it and pushing a button
and seeing what you get.
And I think that that space robot is -- it's poetic because the brand, the camera, have
gone similarly -- >>Morgan Spurlock: Through the roof, into
space.
>>Nick Woodman: So it's, again, a full circle because it is our customers' content generation
that's taken us there.
>>Morgan Spurlock: There a GoPro -- to give you an idea of how many videos there are,
how many video Goes there are being made, there is a GoPro video being uploaded once
every two minutes.
>>Nick Woodman: We got to get together with your Google people.
I think it is more than that.
That stat is a little older.
[ Laughter ] >>Nick Woodman: Maybe you can help us with
our analytics.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Every one minute, every 60 seconds.
One just happened.
>>Nick Woodman: Yeah.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Just while we thought of that.
>>Nick Woodman: Our next Super Bowl commercial.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Why do you -- one of the things I think is so great about it is that
literally it is like you press one button.
It is so simple, so easy.
It is really easy.
How important for you is ease of use to get it into the hands of everybody?
>>Nick Woodman: Hugely important.
I mean, we're -- our vision is to help people capture, manage, create and share engaging
life experiences.
And then we've done really well on the capture side.
On the manage, create, and share side of our mission, we have work to do.
And you can never make your products easy enough to use.
But we must be doing all right because the product is as widely adopted as it is, but
we still have a long ways to go there.
I think that people ask what is the main -- how has GoPro done so well in such a short amount
of time?
I would like to remind them, it has been 13 years so it is not a 13-year overnight success.
But it's really about giving people this creative tool to help them capture and share this life
experience that I think people are really hungry to share.
They just have never -- have never had a means.
And one of the things I'm most proud of at GoPro is I think we're turning on people's
creative energies.
And I hear people all the time tell me how into content creation they are now, how into
story telling they are now.
And prior to their experience and use of a GoPro, they didn't really know that they had
that side of them.
And we're helping turn more people on into storytellers.
And as a way of thank you, they are helping build one of the great consumer crowdsource
businesses around right now.
And for that give many thanks.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Matthias, what's next?
>>Matthias Giraud: What's next?
I'm going to China next month to jump of off the tallest bridge in China.
So it is going to be pretty fun.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Top that everybody in this room.
Nick, last question.
How far away are we until one of these is 4K?
>>Nick Woodman: Well, it is.
The current Hero3 shoots 4K at 15 frames a second.
So the natural next question is, okay, that's great for establishing shots and what have
you.
4k30, sooner than you think.
>>Morgan Spurlock: Let's have a nice round of applause for our guests, ladies and gentlemen.
[ Applause ]