Nick Woodman Case Study

Nick Woodman is a surfer turned millionaire, who founded the GoPro Company in 2002. The company’s flagship product is a high-speed, durable camera used for extreme sports such as skydiving, surfing, biking, and much, much more. At the tender age of, Nick became an interstate surfing medalist, after inspiring himself with photos from a surfing magazine. He began his entrepreneurship as a teenager, selling t-shirts, and eventually entered UC San Diego, due to its close proximity to the beach. In the early 2000’s, he led a failed Internet venture, a game company, which had raised $4 million dollars in funding, but flopped after a year. This failure, however, did not end his aspirations; it further inspired him to better himself and his worth ethic. He travelled to Australia and Indonesia for inspiration, but he faced the predicament of finding an efficient way to document his experience. He opted to strap a camera to his arm using rubber bands, and from this primitive design, the GoPro was born. …show more content…
The corporation has seen a meteoric rise in sales since 2011, going from 234.24 million dollars in revenue, to a whopping 1.39 billion, in 3 short years. This 4-year trend of increased sales is indeed as good an indicator as any that the company is extremely profitable. Despite it’s growing success, GoPro is far from a monopoly, as it does have its share of strong competitors such as Contour, EyeSee360, and Vieviu (rivalfox.com). The GoPro corporation initiated its Initial Public Offering on June 1, 2014, providing 17,800,000 shares of it’s stock, at $21- $24 each. (investor.gopro.com). It’s estimated that the company, due to the 17.8 million stocks sold, raised $427.2 million dollars at the NASDAQ stock