GoPro Files For IPO
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Anyway: They seem to have a good product and they definitely have been great at creating/expanding a new and distinct niche for mobile photography -- one not easily serviced by iPhones and other mobile devices.
So: Congrats!
Mobile phones are only going to start taking bigger bites out of the market. And sure we may not mount our phones on submarines or airplane wings like we could a GoPro but apart from the extreme cases, our phones will be much more convenient than another piece of hardware right?
I think that there are a ton of use cases in markets they haven't broken into, or among more casual users. If every urban biker in the western world bought one, that's a $BN company right there.
As they get cheaper/better there are things like dashboard cams that you wouldn't use your phone for, so I think they have plenty of market left to grow into.
You mention "every urban biker in the western world" but unless GoPro figures out someway to make it necessary for every biker in the western world to have a camera attached to their bike how on earth is this a realistic goal to shoot for? That is like saying Redbull is shooting to get their product into the hands of every athlete...it's a silly assumption.
See: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19284/it-must-have-...
Any city cyclist will tell you about all the close calls and accidents they've had, so it's just a matter of making a camera that's rugged and cheap enough to meet the demand. GoPro has rugged down, now they just need to come down in price and maybe up in usability.
I think it's different from the Red Bull example because red bull doesn't really offer anything that tons of cheap competitors don't already offer, and with taste being what it is there's no 'default' drink to capture the whole market.
If gopro just became 'the dash-cam' company, and any time you bought a new bike or car it was a $50 add-on at the register, I think they'd clean house.
Of course we're a ways from a stabilized HD camera being an impulse buy, but they're probably the best positioned company to get there. Then they just have to fight commoditization, which is a nice problem to have.
Perhaps this is different in the US, but in the UK people were definitely putting lights on their bikes way before then, because if you didn't you were liable to get stopped by the police. Having a light on your bike in the UK has been the law for at least 30 years.
GoPro has a similar mission as Redbull I think, therefore they would be wise to follow the lead Redbull has already proven successful.
Capturing stuff like this is worth it.
Yes, the average consumer is only going to buy one every few years, but there are business that will buy hundreds or thousands.
I think there are other places they could move the business also. They could do other kinds of sensors, heads up displays, lots of things that aren't necessarily cameras.
Putting you mobile phone in some hardened case and using it as a camera would be OK, but you might want to keep your camera running while you use your phone for other purposes (GPS, actually calling someone, listen to music...), and you wouldn't want to lose your phone in the middle of a mountain.
A company like Garmin has made an art of growing revenues in markets that are supposed to be eaten by mobile phones. For example, their fitness division (which is basically GPS Cycling Computers and Watches) made $83 million in Q2 2013[3]. Everything Garmin bike computers do you can get an iPhone app to do instead. But people (including me) buy them because they are SO MUCH BETTER than using a phone.
Incidentally, Garmin introduced their GoPro competitor at the end of 2013.
Also worth noting there is no reason GoPro has to stay limited to cameras.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike,_Inc.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_boom_of_the_1970s
[3] http://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2013/10/30/garm...
Certainly! We're talking about people who are very interested in expensive hobbies (like skiing, snowboarding, motorbiking), these people are very used to spending a lot of money on their hobby. Combine that with the innate human desire to want to record/photo/share our lives, and the market for "allowing people to record their expensive hobbies" is very lucrative.
It seems less likely that phones will be able to supercede GoPro in the same way, since you'd never want to subject such an important device to the physical situations that you would a GoPro.
The lens issue is also non-trivial. For a general purpose camera (i.e. smartphone), you wouldn't want a wide angle lens like you would for PoV video, and making a smartphone's camera lens interchangeable for a small segment of its customers probably isn't happening broadly if ever.
On the other hand, GoPro cameras have a reputation for usability in some very extreme situations, use cases outside of the smartphone story (if you are going to mount a device on your helmet or elsewhere, you better hope that it can withstand the elements and a crash or two
I fly gliders recreationally. Last fall one of the guys in the club called me up and asked if I'd lost my GoPro. I hadn't, but from his description, it was probably the camera of a guy I flew a two-seater with in a competition a year earlier.
Turns out that the camera had been returned by a hiker who found it while hiking on a mountain, approximately 10 kilometers from the airfield. Looking at the last footage in the camera, you could see three guys using a suction cup holder to attach the camera on the outside body of the glider. The video continued as the glider launched, and for approximately ten minutes of flight. Then, the camera detatched from the airplane. As it went tumbling down, there were a couple of frames where the glider was captured from below, rapidly disappearing into the sky.
The camera landed on the mountain, where it remained through the winter. A year later, a guy hiking there found it and returned it, in working order, to the glider club.
Also, are things like Gear Pro and other knock-offs worth anything?
http://www.helipal.com/tarot-t-2d-brushless-gimbal-for-gopro...
It's only 2D whereas the EasyGimbal is 3D but I don't think pan stabilization is much useful, except maybe when filming with the camera in hand. When attached to something (a bike, a motorbike, etc.) 2D stab is more than enough.
Now, if you start doing dive rolls on your trail runs the postprocessing may not be enough, but it's been plenty for my bicycling & dirtbiking.
Googling yields some advice on how to correct the distortion, but nobody seems to provide exact settings. I wonder how much a demand is there for a one-click rectification app for any fisheye.
I've never heard of the Gear Pro. Some of the Go Pro alternative are pretty decent, though. The Garmin Vibe has some nice features, but the form factor might not be great for running (no chest mount). Take a look at [2] for some things to think about (read the comments, too)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_iU8rRGBQE
[2] http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/12/garmin-depth-review.html
One way to correct the jello effect is to add ND filters before the lens to reduce the amount of light and therefore slow the shutter (since you can't otherwise control the aperture). There are filter holders that can be screwed on top of the box, or attached directly to the lens when the GoPro isn't in its box.
The other way is to re-stablilize in post-processing; results can be good to very good depending on the source footage. Heavy shaking and big jello can't really be corrected, but slow shake can be made to disappear completely.
This was shot with a Tarot gimbal attached to a bike, and no software stabilization: http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-5460407.html
This was also shot with a gimbal but (re-)stabilized in post: http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-5317121.html
both with a GoPro 3 Black Ed.
There are loads of other "action cameras" and they're all quite good. I have a Drift Innovation and am quite happy with it.
It was shipped to my house a few days after launch, as I had pre-ordered, but the camera just does not last beyond half an hour when recording 720p@120fps. This seems a bit... silly, but I was willing to chalk it up to launch day jitters. Nothing was fixed as time went on.
I have emailed support regularly, to the tune of once per week for the month and have received zero response. I wanted to just ask about why my battery dies so quickly and what would they suggest.
Nothing.
For a company with such a great product, they sure make a champion of their product and once-happy customer feel worthless.
Sorry for getting off track, it just bothers me still.
Long story short all the footage from my vacation were unusable as many of the videos and pictures were corrupted/distorted which was annoying. Tried customer support but weren't able to fix the issue so I ended up returning it.
1) Video editing is tedious and often greatly underestimated.
2) Their product usability is wanting. I have both a v1 and v2, I still have to read the manual to figure out what the different modes are.
3) Battery life has been disappointing and I understand the v3 has issues too.
I've heard first hand evidence from insiders that loyal customer retention is a big challenge. Growing out of the niche they're in is hard to envisage.
Video editing isn't that bad if you know what you're doing or willing to put in time to learn.
There aren't that many different modes, you can pick most of it up in 15 minutes of looking at the manual (which is probably worth doing with anything you're spending $300+ for.
The battery life though - it's a bummer to be out in the middle of nowhere & expecting to capture some awesome footage to come home & realize that your camera crapped out halfway through.
- Turn off WiFi. This drains battery faster than just having the camera record everything.
- Take only "snippets". This makes editing easier later anyways, since it's usually more convenient to browse through smaller files than through one big long video over an hour. I try to keep every snippet < 1 minute. Most of the time, only 3-5 seconds of one snippet end up in my final video to give it a fast pace anyways.
- Keep a spare battery pack.
But I have to admit that this won't help you a lot, if you're in difficult situations where you can't easily change batteries (under water for long periods of time, climbing somewhere, flying, driving).
Garmin VIRB Elite #1: 2:21 (Marketed: 3:00)
Garmin VIRB Elite #2: 2:24 (Marketed: 3:00)
Garmin VIRB Regular: 2:36 (Marketed: 2:36)
JVC GC-XA2: 1hr 51m (Marketed: 1:48)
GoPro Hero3 Black: 1:29 (Marketed: 1:30)
Sony AS-30: 2:11 (Marketed: 2:40)
Pyle HD PSCHD60WT: 2:54 (Marketed: “More than 2 hours”)
My Hero3 Black lasts well under an hour with WiFi enabled. I believe the Hero3+ is better - they claim 30% better because of software optimisation and a bigger battery.
I don't find recoding resolution makes a big difference.
[1] http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/12/garmin-depth-review.html
So, part of "extending" battery life is knowing when it makes sense to record a scene and when not.
I can still fully recommend the GoPro. It's a fun camera and what I like in particular is that you can point it directly into the sun and still see everything. It has an excellent white balance for amateur video makers like myself.
And of course the 60/120fps in 1080p/720p.
You're thinking like a developer (o; End users see the cool videos and don't see the learning curve needed to produce slick videos. As soon as they're hit with that curve they realise it's not that simple. iMovie goes a long way but it's often a very foreign ui/workflow.
"There aren't that many different modes" not there are not, but the UI on v1 & v2 camera is simply confusing. Trust me.
I agree the whole process needs improvement though.
[1] http://gopro.com/software-app/gopro-studio-edit-software
I was only helping a family member (as the resident family geek) but was left with the impression that it would take a solid weekend (or three) to fully understand the options and how best to get the footage you want.
To contrast I have a "tough" Lumix digital camera which is water, drop and generally abuse resistant that is drop dead easy to use, records in high-def and also has a large LCD and dedicated record/photo buttons that make operating it easy. And I'm not talking about normal recording conditions, I've used both extensively on the trail, in the cold (winters in Maine) and mounted on various vehicles and body parts.
I do think the reasoning behind many of these inconveniences is toughness but the net result is a very difficult product.
/rant
Edit: a couple of links:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-21/three-lesson...
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/investor-plans-revive-contour-r...
There were 3 things I really liked on the Contour, though: the standard tripod screw on the bottom (that's an extra accessory on the GoPro), the battery life was far better, and the model I had was able to withstand a few feet of water without a big bulky case. (Snorkeling/swimming okay, SCUBA not.)
[1] http://gopro.com/support/articles/how-to-pair-your-hero3-wi-...
2. This company is going to get really interesting when it starts to compete with YT/Vimeo in specific verticals for video publishing. (http://gopro.com/channel)
I understand why some do it, they've reached a point where they need funding to scale and already have many private investors. Maybe thats not even right.
When I start a company one day I dont think I will ever want to take in public. It seems like you loose too much control over where you are going. Maybe its because I am a build what our customer want type person and not a lets return value to our shareholder by delivering a cheaper product type. Maybe that doesnt make sense.
1) To allow initial investors (be they the founder or venture capitol) to cash out
2) To generate capital for the next stage of the business's growth & development
unfortunately most of your funding will be from VC companies, and it's unlikely they will give you money under a profit sharing arrangement b/c it does follow their IPO->cash out workflow.
The current system is flawed and self perpetuating
*the stock is held by a small group of owners and many employees. Transfers are limited by contract and by securities laws. Because of the large number of shareholders, the company does have to file periodic reports with the SEC but the shares are not listed on an exchange and not available to the public. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publix#Publix_stock
I'm not sure if they're 'stock' GoPro cameras. The temperature extremes are nothing to sniff at.
That's misleading (and the linked article offers no support for your claim). A vacuum has no temperature, but objects in space certainly do have a temperature and all the normal thermodynamic rules apply.
If what you said were true, you could safely approach the sun as long as you didn't come into contact with it. But that's not true.
In the neighborhood of the non-planet Pluto, the median temperature is just 33 Kelvins.
In the extremes of space, between the stars, the temperature of an object falls to the CMB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background), about 2.7 Kelvins.
The linked article makes the same points.
Think about this. One of a spacesuit's key features is that it uses insulation to protect the astronaut from the temperature of space (meaning those objects, however distant, that exchange heat energy with the spacesuit via radiation). This means the spacesuit's exterior will quickly rise or fall to the temperature of its environment. That, in turn, means the GoPro camera will also rise or fall to the temperature extremes of its environment.
So, if the astronaut is located in a shadowed environment -- let's say on the moon -- the spacesuit exterior and the GoPro camera will fall close to the temperature of space, or the temperature of the shadowed areas of the moon:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091217/full/news.2009.1149.h...
Quote: "Previous findings had identified the Moon as the coldest place in the Solar System, but the latest results push the temperature even lower, all the way to 26 kelvin ..."
The above refers to the shadowed areas of the moon. Pretty damn cold. :)
But -- if the astronaut walks around in the sunlit parts of the moon, the temperature will be very high. My point is the astronaut's temperature inside the suit isn't the issue, and the more efficient the suit, the less its external temperature reflects that of its occupant.
So the GoPro camera would have to tolerate a very wide temperature range.
> After all, it is connected to your wrist, and the inside of your space suite must be at least above 273 K for you to be able to do anything.
A spacesuit that externally radiated any significant energy at room temperature would be a very poor design indeed. And the GoPro camera isn't attached to the astronaut's wrist, it's attached to the spacesuit wrist area.
But we are talking about a space walk here. Let's phrase the question this way: if I have a 1 kg mass of plastic and metal in some proportion and I throw it out of the airlock with the initial temperature of 293 K, what will its temperature be 30 minutes later if it was (a) in the shadow and (b) in the sunlight? This is a different case than being in contact with a hot or cold satellite or planet. It's a rate problem. If we assume a near-perfect vacuum, the only heat going in and out is via radiation. So the question is, how fast does a hunk of metal/plastic radiate heat at 293 K.
Now, the radiation heat transfer out of a black body will be: q = σ T^4 A, where q is the Watts of heat transferred, σ is the Boltzman constant, T is the temperature in Kelvin, and A is the surface area. Roughly: 5.6703e-8 x 293 x 0.1 for a GoPro camera. That's 1.66e-6 Watts, or 1.66 microwatts. That's a pretty damn low transfer rate: we are talking about roughly 3 mJ of energy lost over 30 minutes.
Now, the delta T here is equal to Q/(mC), where Q is our 0.003 Joules, m is the mass, 0.135 kilograms, and C is the specific heat. The specific heat is tricky but let's assume this thing is made out of copper: 390 J/(K kg). That gives us a delta T of, drum roll please, 5.7e-5 degrees. So assuming we are in the shade and are not touching cold objects, the GoPro will come back at the exact temperature it left after a 30 minute space walk.
We can of course figure out what it will be in the sun, where I expect it'll heat up quite a bit, which is probably the more dangerous thing for a piece of equipment. The equations are nearly the same.
To answer, I have to say first that radiation is a much more efficient way to transfer heat energy than convection, and in some contexts it rivals conduction. If it's in shadow, exposed to space and not the sun, the object in your thought experiment will radiate most of its heat energy rather quickly, and will ultimately fall to a temperature near the CMB, i.e. 2.7 Kelvins.
> Now, the radiation heat transfer out of a black body will be: q = σ T^4 A, where q is the Watts of heat transferred, σ is the Boltzman constant, T is the temperature in Kelvin, and A is the surface area. Roughly: 5.6703e-8 x 293 x 0.1 for a GoPro camera. That's 1.66e-6 Watts.
In your calculation, you failed to take the fourth power of the temperature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation#Stefan.E2....
j = σ T^4 (j = radiated power watts)
= 5.67 * 10^−8 * 295^4 Watts from a "unit square", presumably a square meter, or about 430 watts.
Remember that three-dimensional objects lose their heat energy more quickly as they become smaller in size (because their dimensions decrease proportional to the square of their dimensions, but their volume declines as the cube). This means the GoPro camera, initially at room temperature, exposed to space would radiate away its heat energy very quickly.
The linked article suggests that a person (at body temperature and in a normal earthly environment) radiates away a net power of about 100 watts. Remember about this figure that is is a net (radiation minus absorption) for a person of about 2 square meters surface area at room temperature.
If we calculate the example of a person exposed to space (in shadow) directly without any heat inflow, the radiated power would be about 860 watts.
If a person were shaped like a GoPro camera (with the same density) and we scaled it down proportionally, the rate of heat loss would increase (even though the power would decrease) for reasons given above. That consumer camera would not be long for this world -- in fact, it would probably expire faster than the hapless human in the above example.
> So assuming we are in the shade and are not touching cold objects, the GoPro will come back at the exact temperature it left after a 30 minute space walk.
Do take the fourth power of temperature. See how that turns out. :)
The fact that Mercury has no atmosphere doesn't decrease the rate of heat radiation, it increases it (compared to a planet with an atmosphere). Your question appears to relate to the efficiency of vacuum storage bottles, but that's a different case with a different logic.
For a vacuum thermos, the presence of the vacuum represents a less efficient heat conduction medium than air (or foam), which uses conduction and convection to transfer energy. The difference in temperature between the contents and the environment also plays a part.
But for a planet, no atmosphere means radiation operates at maximum efficiency, and radiation is a very efficient energy transfer method, especially when there's a large temperature difference between the object and space.
Even on earth (with an atmosphere), radiation directly to space turns out to be more efficient than atmospheric conduction and convection, such that objects on the surface can fall well below air temperature if the sky is clear of clouds.
It's not uncommon for earth's surface to drop below air temperature overnight, which can produce such effects as "radiation fog" near the ground, caused by condensation of water vapor in the air cooled by the surface.
It's common to believe that on earth, air conduction/convection is the majority heat transfer method and radiation is less effective, but in fact it's the other way around.
It's not just the vacuum, but a combination of a vacuum plus a reflective coating to deal with the effectiveness of radiation as a heat transmission method. In this way a vacuum thermos addresses all three heat conduction methods -- conduction, convection and radiation. More here:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_does_a_thermos_bottle_work
This doesn't mean a vacuum thermos won't lose heat, it only means the rate of heat loss as a function of time is greatly reduced.
As of whether there are better solutions or not, I cannot attest. I will however tell you that a friend of mine working at BestBuy (Florida) told me they sell those like crazy. It is normal to sell five cameras a week from all major brands combined. It is normal to sell five of GoPros a day!
Their product seem top notch and going around reviews, they mostly seem to confirm. I am not sure, however what will they do with a buffer or cash? Their approach is we wont screw people over X amount of years and introduce new things into our devices; we go all the way in in version 1. That's goPro. Where will they go from here, not sure...
Actually GoPro (& related action cameras) customers are probably very interested in expensive sports/hobbies. Many motorcyclists have one, and if you're interested in that you'll be spending a lot of money on the bike, the equipement, servicing, insurance, etc. So what's €300 for a camera?
http://www.fastcompany.com/3018645/fast-feed/this-google-gla...
By filing for an IPO Nick Woodman must believe that the GoPro brand is worth as much as the product they make itself. That is the only justification I can think of for filing. How many iterations of the camera can they make and for how much longer is this sustainable without some sort of a pivot?
There is nothing more to get there.
How do you sell a new product based on this??
" featuresBack to SchoolA Full Ride to Fulfill DreamsThe Best Ride of Our LivesGame ChangerBeyond the Brew
The Best Ride of Our Lives

Nick Woodman still remembers the day he decided to become a surfer. He was eight years old, standing in his friend Brian’s bedroom. Brian’s family had a house in Hawaii, and his walls in California were plastered with tearouts from Surfer magazine depicting palm trees, beautiful people, and the curling turquoise waves of the North Shore.
“I didn’t even know that world existed,” recalls Woodman, Muir ’97, who grew up surrounded by tech startups in the wealthy Silicon Valley community of Atherton. “But from then on, I knew I wanted to live in that world.”
Thirty years later, Woodman is still in Silicon Valley, but he’s tan and fit and has a cheeky freckled grin that suggests he’s living the good life. He should be grinning. He’s the founder and CEO of GoPro—one of the world’s fastest growing camera companies, now worth an estimated $2.25 billion. He’s created a device that helps people capture and share their passions from the North Shore and way beyond.
It started as a durable wrist-mounted camera for surfers to record their feats in the lineup—effectively helping them “go pro.” Now the palm-size cameras, which sell from $200 to $400, can be fastened to helmets, handlebars, ski poles, and, yes, surfboards to document experiences both ordinary and extraordinary. Last October, the Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner—equipped with five GoPros—jumped from 24 miles above the earth’s surface, breaking the world record for the highest and fastest freefall, and broadcasting it live for all to see. A few months later, the cameras were streaming 30-foot waves at the Mavericks Invitational surf contest in Half Moon Bay, Calif., and a few days after that, snowboard slides and backside airs at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo. For GoPro, this is every-day R&D. "
My favorite GoPro video is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2AfsBrpwRQ#t=1m10s
Skip to 1 minute, 10 seconds if it doesn't place you there automatically.
Check out their YouTube channel for examples of what their customers do with their cameras. It's pretty amazing.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/07/gopro-files-for-ipo-as-the-...
They're selling a somewhat specialized camera to a huge potential market, making billions of dollars.
It's a far more promising business plan than 99% of the startups I see mentioned on HN.