Moving to San Francisco

8/28. Why I want to invest in GoPro

Today I came across Nick Woodman. Not personally, but I watched him. He is GoPro. Rarely have I seen a publicly listed company so epitomized by one person, the founder.

I am excited about GoPro. The company is a great metaphor for San Francisco and my move to the West Coast. Passion and relentless pusuit of what you need to do in life. No compromise, no excuse. Moving to San Francisco for me is a bit like jumping down Colbert’s Couloir in Jackson Hole. The latter is a GoPro classic shooting ground.

Founded by Nick Woodman, a surfer with eduction GoPro makes cameras to capture events like surfing or skiing down harsh terrains. Woodman’s passion transpires allover. More importantly, the guy has a plan. He talks about hiring people, engineers and creatives. He wants to become a media company selling hardware, software and publishing. He also has the potential to own or have exclusive access to a gigantic library of crowd sourced content about passion.

Passion comes from deep inside. Who knows why. It doesn’t matter. We know it when we see it. Woodman is that kind of guy. The products are sold and become immediate advertising for the product. The GoPro product sells memories about passion.

Valuation is a problem. Am I buying a great company with a great founder but a bad stock? This fear has to be taken seriously. I don’t believe so. My first valuation of the company gives me fair value at mid 60s. That is only 36% above where the stock actually trades. But at least it’s a fair number still within reach.

My assumptions are not very aggressive. I think Nick is much more aggressive. He wants to turn GoPro into a media company. Media means content from people’s lives, captured in the moment when they happened. A huge archive of snapshots. GoPro makes peoples experiences morph into a chain of events which can be streamed through channels like youtube or social media.

GoPro has an opportunity to become a crowdsourced media company. Content is created with GoPro cameras. Content is produced with GoPro technology and services. Ultimately GoPro helps broadcast the content and makes money producing, curating, marketing and monetizing the content. It’s about people’s passion captured when it happened and broadcast over the internet.

GoPro can be the ultimate media company of the social media age. Instant capture, high quality production and multi channel distribution.