The Untold Story of How Massive Success Made GoPro’s CEO Lose His Way. Can He Recover?
Nick Woodman created GoPro to reflect his own freewheeling image. It worked really well. Until it didn’t.
Nick Woodman is crying.
Red-tailed hawks wheel around the sky outside the wall of windows of the GoPro founder’s hilltop office in San Mateo, California. A few miles east and far below, the San Francisco Bay twinkles in the late-September light. Mementos of a life spent surfing around the world, driving racecars, and hanging out with his heroes, like surfing legend Kelly Slater, line the credenza behind Woodman’s desk.
A day ago, the 42-year-old Woodman stood center stage in the planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences and introduced his company’s latest cameras and services, along with virtual-reality videos projected onto the room’s domed ceiling to show off all the new tricks the products can pull off. Today, a bit bleary from the festivities that followed, Woodman is opening up about the long, difficult journey that led to this launch — one that saw his publicly traded company’s stock bottom out below $8 a share, down from the high of $98.
