The Extinction of GoPro
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2024
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In the 2010s, there was one startup who by the measures of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, seemed destined to be the next big billion-dollar consumer brand. That company was GoPro. GoPro took the world by storm with its game-changing cameras. With radically compact design, tiny form factor, high portability, rugged waterproof exteriors, and reasonable picture quality - GoPro cameras were able to capture never before seen action and perspectives.
GoPro was category-leading and category-defining - the company had effectively created and owned an entire category of cameras. It was the pioneer, golden standard, and household name as GoPro was not just the name of the product and company, but also became the unofficial label for any small, portable, action camera on the market.
Yet fast forward to present-day in 2023, less than a decade later, and GoPro’s stock has dropped 95%. How could a company who had all the right ingredients from the measures of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, squander it all in such a short period of time? How could having a market-defining, category-leading product be worth so little? In this episode, we’ll cover the rise and fall of GoPro into 3 eras, their failures in strategy, and how the company’s collapse serves as a crucial lesson on the importance of knowing your market.
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0:00 Be A HERO
4:18 Sponsor Break (Kajabi)
6:06 The Golden Age
18:20 The Era of Doom
29:03 Dead Brand Walking
Go to kajabi.com/modernmba to get your 30 day free trial!
0:00 Be A HERO
6:06 The Golden Age
18:20 The Era of Doom
29:03 Dead Brand Walking
Why did you reupload this video ?
4:33 This graph has no Y axis
You should do the rise and fall of fitbit
Stock buy back is a cancer on the long term success of companies.
you forgot 10:49
Why does a company need infinite massive growth to not be seen as a failure? Perhaps just don't value them as if they were going to take over the world to begin with
There's nothing wrong with companies that have steady income and slow and careful growth. There's lots of companies in the REIT, Manufacturing, Utilities, and Consumer Goods sectors in particular that are wildly successful. I think what "The Modern MBA" was touching on here is that GoPro tried to market themselves to investors and take on business practices like tech startup companies. It seems like GoPro tried to label themselves as a super-fast-growing company that would take over the world, when in reality they are just a unique hardware camera company. Look at Nikon and Canon. No one would call those businesses failures, and their products are wonderful. I'd place a bet today that Canon and Nikon will still be around and in business 10 years from now because they know who they are and are focused on what they do best: camera hardware.
Their shareholders won’t agree with you when they’d be better off throwing money into something else. Staying invested in something that won’t grow or return more to investors than the rest of the market is, by the rules of the systems we have, effectively charity.
They don't, there's an entire sector of investment for stock that are stagnant but reliable returns that aren't expected to go up or down by a significant margin over time.
Capitalistic society
fear of stagnation
The first DJI quadcopter (drone), the Phantom v1.0 had no camera, but a plastic frame molded to fit a GoPro. It's known that DJI approached GoPro for a partnership and GoPro was so full of themselves, they snubbed DJI and decided to come up with their own drone... we saw how that went. Meanwhile, DJI acquired Hasselblad for their drone cameras. Yeah, the camera brand that went to the moon.
to be honest, hasselblad hasn't really been making waves in the current digital camera era. Most of the conversation of Hasselblad has been on their vintage models. And while that's good for branding, hasselblad serves a very high end market with their current offering. The majority of people who are in on this current Xpan craze, the best they'll do is buy a used hasselblad, which doesn't give anything to Hasselblad themselves.
I had that one plus my gopro on it. I was one of the first TH-camrs doing camping hiking to use carry this combo now everyone does 😅
And yet later GoPro copied features from the DJI Motion action cams (eg. the touch screen and the front facing screen). I bought a DJI cam because it was better than the GoPro and the latter also had issues with 4K recording).
DJI just made a quality hand held gopro style camera with a built in gimble and really good image quality
Yes ,arrogance and selling software updates as a new device are the main raison for their decline.......
I believe GoPro failed when it went public. It no longer served a niche market excellently, but now required year over year growth to satisfy investors. This is simply not how GoPro started and I would argue there are many businesses/product catagories that simply shoot themselves in the foot by going public as a result of a conflict of interests.
Also, GoPro's initial value of +80$ was not necessarily representative of their true value. I personally do not believe their value "dropped" but rather there was a "price correction". Much of the initial high price was a result of excessive hype.
Yeah going public severely impacted gopro's ability to diversify it's offerings. Going into a new category, it takes both time and money to develop a good product and market share and the public markets simply don't have that much patience. The constant pressure to grow quarterly and satisfy shareholders meant gopro abandoning projects too quickly like their drone division and not staying long enough, which led to them losing many opportunities and to the position where they are today
its not that it went public, but as the video showed, the way they tried to do it, which felt very anti consumer. Alone they they realized theres little innovation possible, yet still releasing annually, is nonsense, and since this increases investment, it reduces profit. This would have also avoided the issue of discounting older models since there is no older model. All they had to do was being solid and be a product in which that people know what they get
The same goes for every company that does so eventually. That line can't go up forever and only ends with each public company eating itself.
@@fetBit is that it went public. It doesn't matter how innovative a product is, there is a limit to the money no matter how popular or good the product. Thus there is a limit to growth. Public companies compete against every other public company of comparable risk. This is not unique to GoPro. Even Amazon struggles with this and we regularly see the thing that keeps behemoths running is government contracts and prospects of government contracts. Amazon will likely go the way of IBM.
@@fetB idk man, apple freaks spend thousands every year to buy essentially the same thing or some unnecessary accessory that they never utilize more than twice a year..
GoPros biggest problem was their inability to understand what their power users wanted who are the ones buying multiple units and when they inevitably get destroyed they buy more. But they came out with cameras that would overheat, stop recording and sometimes fail to even save the footage it had captured. If the equipment isn’t considered reliable, when you have one shot to capture that footage you need to be able to trust that the camera is going to work when you go to get the footage off of it.
All my gopros were hunks of poop! And very $$$ garbage
GoPro was never that camera. It was a mass appeal product but still does it better than anyone else. It just no longer holds a monopoly and has to deal with a lot of competition. Most of which comes from lesser product and cell phone cameras, not comparable action cameras.
I was about to buy a GoPro, my first GoPro, then I read that GoPro overheats, and I bought a normal video camera which doesn't overheats
GoPro invested heavily into marketing execs and business majors and cut their hardware engineering. And now business majors with their PowerPoints are struggling to understand why nobody wants an unreliable product.
We want a camera that doesn't overheat at night when it's 10°C xD
4:09 - Dude, on paper, it's a mystery. For anyone who used their cameras, there is no question at all where the market value went. They made good cameras that were easy to use and then they made awful cameras that were difficult to use.
Agreed! I recently bought a new hero 11. (I typically don’t buy the latest and greatest of anything because they are often not much more than beta tests.) I was very disappointed by two things - the almost useless “quik” app, and the apparent overheating problem with the screens, which time out and go blank, leaving the operator unable to monitor framing of the shot, leaving that job to guesswork and chance.
I really wish I had bought a DJI instead.
It's incredible to me that so many companies fall into the same trap of "growth to infinity" over actually retaining existing customers.
Imagine if a restaurant was doing the same thing? There is no way. A restaurant relies heavily on returning customers.
Following the "growth to infinity" makes the product unappealing to the core customer base.
And the infinite NEW customers these companies rely on simply don't exist either. There is a finite amount of customers in this world and the companies need to understand that at this point.
Infinite company growth is simply impossible unless you change and adapt and add and innovate and branch out into multiple spheres.
Couldn't have said it better 👏
Public companies are pressured to grow
GoPro should have stayed private was what I was thinking@@jeffy5120
Yup. They said the same thing about disposable contact lenses.
capitalism demands infinite growth
It’s all about Insta360 now. Much better hardware, much better app, much better support, just better in every way. The re-framing option where you can record a video in “Pro” mode, then decide things like aspect ratio, filters, etc. later on is a game changer for me.
And this coming from someone who literally owns every Hero Black model from the Hero4 black to the current Hero12 Black. I’m just over it. 12 iterations and they still can’t figure out the bug where the camera won’t turn on and you have to remove the battery and re-insert it to get the camera to work? So sick of that.
Insta 360 is trash. Their little magnet cameras don't even stay on the magnet. The quality isn't that great either.
@@UncleAndrewsAdventuresCan't speak for their small cameras but the X3 is a legit 360 camera. And it isn't plagued with bugs like GoPro, it's pretty stable
The single thing that killed Gopro was its unreliability. People continually complained about Gopro over heating, switching off, battery length, ETC. People wanted to love this product, but it just was unreliable. No one wants their footage to be lost or not captured. If the Gopro just worked, it would of been big!
You said everything I wanted to say! The only reason I never owned a GoPro over the past decade was solely because of the well-founded complaints of current users. I witnessed the frustration and buyer’s remorse of others and decided to avoid GoPro altogether.
Just 2 hours of use back in 2010... then dead for me.
Then a few months later, my friends had the SAME thing happen.
Never would turn back on, didn't honor the warranty claim.
So fuck em, never went back and never will.
yup
I have tried a few action cams, and ended up using GoPro the most, I find that quality SD card is important, and pretty much the only drawback for me is low battery life, plus they swell after 2 years of use and need to be thrown out. Heat is only an issue when you try to push the resolution and frame rate very high. So far I don't see any other manufacturer beating their image stabilization. I didn't upgrade from Hero 8 as their new cameras seem too bulky for me, hopefully GoPro removes the bloated features like useless front color display, it's really unnecessary.
I've bought only one go-pro in my life and it was the most useless, over priced camera camera I ever bought and I've bought full frame cameras! CONSTANT overheating and crashing. My 100 dollar chinese knock off action camera had a better and more responsive interface, cheaper accessories, and didn't over heat, didn't crash, and had almost as good image quality. I was shocked at how terrible the go-pro camera was considering how many people buy them. The brand is all hype, zero substance.
Not sure how broadly this applies, but everyone I know who owns a GoPro owns the first one they bought and most bought a previous generation. People view them as lifelong items, not something to upgrade every year or two. They sell a quality item as a one time purchase that doesn't require any recurring subscription to unlock core features. It's a solid enough business with a solid enough business model if they stick to fundamentals and live off the relatively comfortable profit margin of their cameras, they just need to accept their crown as the leader of a niche market.
Agree but I really fear the 'lesson' these businesses take away is don't make quality one time purchase products people can just own and enjoy for years without needing constant upgrades or a subscription to use something without really owning it. A nightmare scenario really for consumers. I also think the message could be there's nothing wrong with being and remaining a midsize or even small business making a decent income producing a solid product you believe in. Infinite growth and great riches aren't mandatory versions of success and have their downsides.
I have two. A GoPro 8, and a GoPro 11 / Creator Edition. Both were gifts from my wife. I regifted the 8 to my teen son. The 11 is actually really cool, and I use it often. It did open my eyes to the improvements that go into these devices. So now, I do see myself upgrading again. NOT every year, but maybe when we get to the 14?
Haha, I bought my first GoPro in 2022. A hero 9 and haven’t even considered getting an 11 or 12
@@DavCro what was your alternative brands that you switched to?
Personaly I won't ever consider gopro again because they're super unreliable and there are better options.
GoPro could have easily been what DJI is today if they had entered in different product category. DJI also started in a niche drone market but quickly adapted to making camera accessories.
Dji is private company allows it to bleed $$ and gets less scrutiny if it fails on its 1st iteration.
The core difference between the two is the skills required to create value from the product, driving a drone to capture cool videos can almost be done by anybody, doing cool physical stuff that worthy to be capture is such a small market
@@osamataha336they could have been making dashcams, 3D scanning hardware and software, other types of rugged accessories such as diving watches, skydiving altimeters, helmets etc.
DJI is located in Shenzhen , the hub for all the small electronic devices, which allow them to save money on logistics
Many companies dont have the vision. Many founders are business guys, and not engineers. If a business guy is successfull with one product, he will try to grow the company by increasing the sales. A founder with engineering background would put the technological improvement/expansion as main priority to gain more market share, because he has the capability to materialize the idea into product. He knows what is technologically possible and the challenges. Nvidia is a great example.
Hence there are more and more engineers became CEOs in tech companies nowdays such as Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Amd, etc.
The worst caveat of GoPro as a product have been overheating ever since they introduced 4K recording. This is quite hilarious how they were making new models over the years never ever addressing that issue. Which in turn, combined with offerings from DJI, Sony and Insta360, basically killed the whole very loyal extreme athletes customer base.
agree with you
I presume they haven’t fixed it because they haven’t been able to find a solution to the overheating problem.
My go pro was overheating when I was inside at a golf simulator. The room was a little warm with all the running machinery but it’s ridiculous how they can’t fix the problem.
The hero 2 overheated and froze. The first Hero was my best.
My Hero 4 black overheated while scuba diving. It was a POS from day one, it wouldn't do time lapse without overheating, also the battery life sucked.. Lets just say I never "upgraded" and I was not a repeat customer.
Highlighting the CEO's perspective, how he is surrounded by tech millionaires hyping up drones, CEO cashing out on the IPO stage and not understanding the impact of his actions (people losing their jobs, shareholders losing their investments) is so profound. It is one of the biggest reason why he looks like such a doofus giving interviews. It seems like he has no idea who are his customers and what they need.
"shareholders losing their investments" When will people learn not to buy these IPOs?. In 5 years, Modern MBA will be lamenting all the EV, wind and solar energy and "climate" companies that tanked.
He said as much in that one cringe interview. (Even if he didn't know he was saying it)
He doesn't look like the sharpest tool in the shed, more like the center of attention at a party, who had a great idea that hit the jackpot. The technical and management skills to manifest that idea with reliability is missing.
@@Gregorius421turns out that growing up wealthy doesn’t equate to actually knowing how to run a business.
I find it kind of funny that the leadership of GoPro is acting like the only people who use GoPro are those who are extreme athletes, etc, as opposed to the average consumer. Most people I knew that had them were not extreme athletes, but average people who wanted pictures/videos in conditions that they would not want to take their phones in, such as traveling, going to the beach, boating, etc.
I still remember when GoPro was one of those go-to gift options during the holidays.
Then 95% of those camera users realized that no one cares what they post.
@@martybadboyi wish everyone would learn that, and just start choosing when to record something for themselves instead of recording everything to show everyone. Especially at concerts. Sick of seeing 40 rectangles ruin my view when all i used to worry about was a tall dude with an afro blocking my view
It sucks to hear that this channel isn't profitable for you. You make high-quality videos with good information. I hope that the profitability increases.
It's depressing how lazy reaction vids are by far the most popular and profitable videos on TH-cam.
Share his videos on social media to help him grow
@@cjc2010stealing is always profitable
The Rise and fall of Modern MBA 😅
bro just get sponsored by squarespace or skillshare ez
I've had many GoPro's and they've all been really unreliable. They've always been super temperamental, that's the only reason I switched to DJI. I've had 3 or 4 DJI action cameras and they are awesome. Easy to use, great quality and most important they're very reliable.
I've had many GoPro's and they've all be super reliable. So there's that.
@@thebikeracer I remember seeing widespread overheat problems with hero 4
I have a hero 11 and it’s super reliable. Doesn’t even overheat in 110 degree weather
I've owned every model since they came out and used them extensively in various environments. They absolutely SUCK compared to DJI, so there's that. @@thebikeracer
@@showproja I guess everyone has a different experience...
They were strong in my country, despite being hotspot for extreme sports, but I wonder why they never kicked dash cam and police cams market right away. Could even supply security cameras hardware to those companies.
maybe not profitable? body cam need to be rugged, they don't need good image, but endurance.
Dash cams need to be able to withstand extreme overheating, which GoPro cameras are notorious for issues with, even at room temps. Otherwise, you'd have a good point... Set up a B2B or institutional brand/division and sell bodycams and dash cams to law enforcement and trucking companies.
@@jayschafer1760 I've got a Hero 3 I used to use as a dashcam in my courier van. With a 64GB memory card it could record all 13 hours of the run in 720p and all it needed was a mount on the dash and a power cable into the lighter socket. Suspect I managed to dodge a bullet with the overheating since it was mounted right next to the windscreen air vents so had a constant flow of cool air across it all day. There weren't many dashcam options back then, and none had the specs the Hero 3 had.
GoPro has become the iPhone of action cameras, minor innovations with premium prices. My hero 3 still going strong years later
I just sold my GoPro10 Black and bought a DJI OSMO Action 4. I use my cameras exclusively for SCUBA diving and I am very happy with my new DJI camera. No more "green screen" or "repairing file" message at the most inconvenient times and a battery that last much much longer, not to mention many other avantages with the DJI camera.
DJI and Insta360 are killing them off. Pushing the market forward with innovation.
Funny how the guy said "we failed because we didn't have proper competition like Ford" meanwhile 2 new brands were already digging it's grave...
I would not count GoPro out just yet..
I don’t know. A lot of the high end customers the video speaks about (including myself) have moved on to Insta360 cameras. So much better than GoPro. They would have to create something mind numbingly cool to topple them over.
I use a DJI Action Camera 4, whenever someone acknowledges it they usually say “Nice GoPro.”
You've forgot about the issues with the cameras themselves, over several generations they just kept freezing, loosing data or not even starting. Ended up giving ours away!
Same here. I gave mine away, and still regret that. My friend took it fishing and missed all sorts of photo opps and videos because the camera just didn't work.
Great analysis. As a product manager and a GoPro user, I was thinking of writing a blog post of similar theme. It's quite shocking that I learned from your video that the CEO of GoPro once claimed they didn't have a competitor. This year, DJI rolled out Action 4, and last week their Pocket 3, it's a matter of time before DJI completely eclipse GoPro from all aspect in the action cam market.
Aside from the CEO's lack of willingness to fight, it's worth noting that there's a general pattern in the consumer products. When the category becomes mature, the leader has so few space to move forward, the runner-ups in China get the chance to catch up and overtake. It happened in many fields, home appliances, PCs, etc, all caught up by Chinese players. If Apple didn't have iOS and its ecosystem, iPhone would have been eaten alive already.
If GoPro wants to survive, they need to pivot away from relying on consumer hardwares to software systems or commercial products-which unfortunately unlikely to happen due to its complacent leadership team.
I'm with you on that. These days I own 2 DJI drones, DJI microphones, a DJI Gimble for my Samsung S23 and my Hero 11. With the advance in their products, I could easily see swapping out my GoPro for a DJI camera next time around. I'll still keep my Hero 11 but it's quite possible I'd move on after.
Your report is intriguing but you completely missed the hardware failure problem Go Pro experienced. I read multiple people experienced this problem. I bought one before learning of this problem, and mine ultimately died, which was a hardware issue. I contacted Go Pro and they did nothing, no repair, no replacement, no discount. Their answer was to buy a new one. I chose not to. I never owned another Go Pro after that. This video interesting to watch in light of my experience with Go Pro.
From talking people that are "power users" they have had enough, technical problems shared across generations have not been fixed and in some cases made worse. When someone films something that's difficult or time consuming and loses the footage its beyond frustrating, if your camera or smartphone messes up its annoying but you either retake it or wait till the doggo does the funny thing again in the future.
If it happens after you pulled off a really fancy mountain bike route its not going to take many times before you drop the brand entirely.
Most GoPro freezes or footage issues stem from the SD card used. The HERO11 and 12 are actually very reliable. But GoPro does need to start keeping pace with developments like the fast magnetic mount systems, fast battery charging etc.
Yeah I noticed a difference in overheating between my "sent back to the store Hero 10" and my current Hero 11
@@simonwyndham
Nowadays, Nico Woodman keeps talking about how their mistake was going sideways and not focusing on the core market. However, I feel like it is the exact opposite that cost the future of GoPro. Just compare GoPro's attempt to enter the drone market with DJI's attempt to enter the action camera market. DJI spent 3 generations of product, 2 major changes of strategy, and years of development (more if you count the pocket series as part of the attempt) to eventually create a successful product. In comparison, GoPro abandoned the market and dismissed the entire department after less than two years, with only 1 product and no iteration. Nico still believes that the problem was pivoting too much on "non-core" products. Unfortunately, it was exactly this mentality that was the real problem. The reality is GoPro has never made a serious enough attempt at any of their new ideas. They kept dreaming that their new product line or service would become an instant success from the get-go without putting in enough effort, and they just quit as soon as the immediate result wasn't as great as they imagined.
I think one of the advantages that DJI has is that it's private and so there's no constant pressure to get better with every quarter as in the case of public markets, which allows it to venture into new categories and spend some time there to come up with good enough products even if the bottom line takes a hit. If GoPro spends a similar amount of time trying to perfect their non core offering which in the short term hits the bottom line, the markets would be ruthless, forcing gopro to just stick to their core offering
@@akshayjain6290 which is very confusing, it's not like GoPro was bleeding money when it IPO'd, it's not like they're in any rush which require massive initial funding. They could've stayed private, GoPro's CEO could've still get millions of dollars. Why take the devil's bargain when you got nothing to gain to begin with
@@aronseptianto8142I guess because of the VCs as they must be looking for an exit
@@akshayjain6290 DJI is also a much bigger company with significantly more resources.
DJI also has mastered near-absolute reliability in their categories. When I turn my Mavic 3 on and go for a flight, I feel confident in the technology. I'm still careful and watch what I'm doing, but my experience over the last couple of years generally means I expect the drone to come back and land without incident.
I would NOT depend on the GoPro 10 I had on my trip to SE Asia last year the same way. Between overheats, lost footage and various other issues I learned to expect problems. Thankfully when I got home the Hero 11 had just gone on sale and I was able to return the 10 and buy the 11 without issue. So far it's been much better.
What needs to be noted is that Nicks father is an investment banker who got him both his initial funding and recovery funding for GoPro.
It’s not daddy’s money, but dad is running the money management firm.
So it helped him alot to keep power and get such high payouts as CEO.
Hell I think the original story for go pro was his latest company failed and he went to find him self on surf trips in Australia and Indonesia for a few months.
Actually helpful analysis. I appreciate how succinct and direct your retrospectives are. Other channels and even business news networks are less willing (and potentially able?) to take jabs at large corps fundamentals and obviously poor, in retrospect, decision making. Its important to point out when C suite leadership, who fail their way upwardly into a position of power, make consistently bad decisions and achieve success by being at the right place at the right time. If it weren't for analysis like these, people would still believe these companies are just "going through a rough patch' and are examples of the ideal type of business.
Yep, where you bring up the barriers to entry, capture is definitely a big one for me. I'd like a GoPro, but I also don't have anything worth filming with it
My GoPro Hero 2 still works. Lots of uses. Dash cam is one. Critter cam market is another suggestion. My mobile phone is used for capture, editing and sharing. Insta360 is on my wishlist.
I never thought of GoPro as a camera. I always saw it as a camera mounting system with a camera attached. That was their genius. Before GoPro, clients would want us to put cameras in race cars, on helmets, on handlebars - GoPro made all that much easier.
I love that MBA comes from the tech industry but always takes shots at it whenever there’s a gap 😂
Anyone who has worked in tech knows that the tech industry is just speculation and gambling on the stock market and they don’t do much actual technological innovation
@@fruitloopz311 aha the plot thickens
I bought a GoPro 8, used it a few times. Great camera
and exactly 2 years after purchase date, it stopped working. Mind you, mine never fell in the water and was in excellent condition.
Never again
They already got (and spent) your money!
why do you think I look for companies that want to keep their cameras working long after the person is deceased?
it's not that expensive to value a customer's memories by just giving them a reliable device that doesn't have cloud services and is just local, hard drive devices that don't require networks to take your stuff you spent time to do
I was one of the first to buy a GoPro. I still have it, but the plastic housing is a decomposing sticky mess. I bought a few more upgraded versions, a plethora of underwater housings, brackets galore, digital screens, batteries, chargers, etc. Then I saw how expensive things were getting and started looking around. I bought DJI drones and was impressed, so I bought DJI cameras and never looked back. And unlike any of my GoPros, my DJI's have never overheated. You couldn't pay me to switch back. It's all about value for money and customer satisfaction.
kinda crazy how you made this video and never mentioned insta360 or their line of action cams which along with dji have taken a huge portion of their market
The lack of feature development compared to insta360 is why I purchased it over a GoPro
Indeed.
ps. To me Insta's editing app killed GOPRO
Never heard of insta360
10:49 You got an audio skip here.
Your comment regarding the most difficult challenge for the casual user being "Capture" is spot on. Even as someone comfortable with technology, I have made numerous blunders when attempting to use my GoPro that resulted in poor shots or even no shot at all. I agree that GoPro corporate seemed to rarely focus on this stage as they progressed through their hardware advancements.
"One Trick Pony Got Greedy (or Lazy, Depending on your Point of View)" pretty well sums it up.
One of the factors that led to their demise was how horrible their customer service got. It used to be great, then they outsourced it and refused to help people with any sort of defects with their cameras. I heard many people having these same issues and people lost their willingness to continue to support gopro. Also their subscription crap that they kept trying so hard to push on everyone, it just led people away. Nobody wants to pay for another subscription for something they don't need.
DJI on the other hand actually has decent customer support. I was able to get a drone replaced last year free of charge without issue. I do think that ability comes from fact that DJI has a lot more money so they can take a hit to keep the customer happy on a hardware problem. Also though, I think the average drone customer is different than the average sport cam user. GoPro probably got burned by people using the camera on vaction and then returning them.
@@michaellefevers4248 yeah you have a good point, Gopro is more for just anyone including tourist type stuff whereas drones are typically more for photographers
Many years ago, I was contracted to design a GPS accessory for the GoPro to add GPS speed and data to the video. They finally integrated a marginal version and after multiple generations. Missed opportunity
For Hero12 the removed the GPS hardware and used the rest from the Hero11....
as a hobbyist youtuber(car building and motorcycles) the crash of go pro has helped me a bit. the proliferation of cheap go pros, and living in a college/tourist town(Bend Oregon) made acquiring a fleet of go pros easy!
however, a buddy showed me what a cheap iPhone 12 can shoot. TH-cam channels like Dank-Pods, who shoot exclusively with iPhone, have great video quality.
i still use my go pros, but the writing is on the wall for the hero 4s and sessions. they just cannot hold up to the newer, better quality go pros in the fleet.
i recently bought sony zv-1 and looking to buy a phone or insta 360x or dji or gopro in near future. it seems like overall quality grew really well and having a professional setup for below 1k dollar is so easy. I don't even know what exactly i should buy in near future but it all seems good choices to me.
@@Yusuf-ok5rkhero to Hero 4 generation, Hero 5 to Hero 8 is the next generation, and hero 9 to Hero 12 is the last generation so far. Going from a 3+ and a session for to a hero 9 was a massive leap. I got an eighth next and it's not that different from a nine but I also only shoot in 2K
Your point about workflows and knowing where the pain points are for your market reminds me of a recent video by Tantacrul about the history of music notation and proposed reforms thereof.
Many music startups hypothesize that the biggest hurdle for people learning to play music is mastering notation, but Tantacrul argues persuasively that the bigger challenge is the innate mechanical difficulty of playing an instrument at all. As such, most novel notation startups are doomed to failure.
The gopro subscription service model was the main reason why i chose insta360x3 as my new camera. Now after using insta360 for awhile, my god it's so much better and reliable than any gopro i ever used.
the man who makes my sundays
They should not have dropped the "Session" formfactor. It was so much better than the big standard Gopro. And if you want a screen just stream the content on your phone.
Totally agree. I love the two sessions I own, still using them often.
Not to mention they cornered the drone action cam market while they made those. If they made another, I have no doubt they would corner it again. Hell, quite a few people still strap session 5s to their drones, all these years later.
Yup, I have a runcam 5 orange just for that form factor.
I just bought my first GoPro and it’s totally fun. I don’t use it as an action cam. I’m a pro photographer. I use it as a bombproof camera I carry with me everywhere, that also shoots really impressive video for its size. I’m enjoying it immensely.
This is my first experience watching this channel. This presentation was really well done! Thanks!
Great video. For me the beginning of the end was the launch of the Karma. Its was a spectacular launch event. Then the Mavic was launched a week later and utterly decimated the Karma. GoPro had been targeting the Phantom and DJI came in and blindsided them with the Mavic. Having Karmas fall out of the sky didn’t help either. They had to have lost hundreds of millions on the Karma.
I have a Mavic 3 and love it. Mini Pro 3 also. I believe calling the drone Karma was stupid and something tells me it was all the CEO having the final say.
I also believe the Karma was the beginning of the end. After they sunk so much into a failed product they tried to recover by doubling down on pushing new models every year. The only way to push new models is to up the specs like resolution and framerate, which led to poor reliability and made their products useless for their biggest users.
If you've got one chance to catch a shot, a camera that overheats or fails to save the footage isn't appealing.
One of the things that really surprised me when I went to buy a new GoPro 10 after shelving my Hero 3 many years ago, was I didn't even realize they were in a yearly upgrade cycle. I bought a 10 at Costco in Aug 2022, traveled for 6 weeks with all the known issues of the 10, and when I got home in Sep saw the 11 had been released. I was able to return my 10 to Costco - and actually felt good about it since it had many problems, and buy the 11 directly from GoPro. I haven't used the 11 as much, but zero problems so for. Then all of a sudden the 12 is released and I was like....uhhhh. No, I'll skip it.@@tom.m
The amount of research you have done to produce this video is insane. Really great job, please have my sub! Look forward to many more vids and all the best to your channel!
The annual release cycle positioned GoPro as being similar to mobile phones. Something that, some, users would be upgrading every 1-2 years and manufacturers needed a new model to be in the market at all times in order to draw consumer dollars.
However the reality is that they were closer to the digital cameras where, despite new products coming on a 1-3 year release cycle, the majority of users would hold on to their devices for years at a time.
The middle era of GoPro devices (5-9) never had a killer upgrade that made it a must have. Upgrading the sensor's Megapixels only take you so far.
The problem from my perspective, by 2014, Go-Pro treated customers badly if they were not buying a new one every few months.
I was at an expo in Orlando (Fl.) where Go-Pro had a stand.
I had two older Hero's one of the original plus another 3~4 years newer and was thinking about an upgrade.
I asked if there was a possibility of software updates as a conversation starter, rep looked bored with no-one to demonstrate new models for.
Instead of just saying they were not supported, the representative was incredibly dismissive calling older models crap then telling me to update to newest model (at the time it was Hero 4 Black)
Not the way to keep customers happy or promote sales (even if it works for Apple).
From that point on, I stopped using mine and will not even entertain the idea of buying a replacement from such a company, and that was before I even knew about technical problems.
Also the competition for action camera was tighter and GoPro was stagnant. Also DJI went to enterprise market where they sell there high end drones for agriculture and geosurvey market which is very lucrative.
Exactly. Enterprise and institutional sales can be tough to get into, but when DJI's early generation agriculture and powerline survey drones are (were?) competing against a guy in a Cessna (at $150+/hour) or a guy in a helicopter (at $300-400+/hour), it's drones can be expensive so long as they have savings on operational costs.
To me, as a Gopro consumer and frequent user since the first one, the biggest issue is the little increment of features from a "generation" to an other. I only needed and bought the first one, the 4th and 7th. I'm looking at each iteration to have an idea if it is be a good deal or not to upgrade, and it rarely is the case. Also each time an interesting new feature is added we have to wait for the next generation so it is stable. Right now Gopro 12 is a potential upgrade as it the stable version of the 11... but still I wont buy it until the 14 will be out, because :
1- There finally is some good competition, so the 13 has to come with strong new features to not be eaten by guys like the Insta 360
2- 14 will likely be the stable version of the 13.
3- If 14 isn't that much interesting 12 will be cheaper and way enough for my needs.
4- 7 is still working great for me.
5- It's a 400$ investment for pure leisure and my leisure budget gets smaller every year. To me there's no choice to make between putting this money in going on vacation or filming my holidays staying at home. This year my big buy will be a new snowboard, not a camera stopping me from riding because of its cost.
The Hero7 is the most reliable camera they've ever came out with, and it covers all my needs in an action camera. I've used newer versions from friends and they are simply not nearly as reliable as my Hero7. Hypersmooth 1.0 is good enough, too, it's a fallacy that you even need the latest/greatest. Until GoPro can make another model as reliable as the Hero7 with all the features of the competing brands, I'll continue to use the Hero7.
I used GoPro mostly for scuba diving- this maybe is not the largest sports market, but over the last 10 years, thanks to GoPro, dive photography went from something very rare, which few divers could afford, to being standard. When I was diving last year, more than half divers had GoPros. I wish the company leaned heavier into that and improved the photography features.
Would be more useful to understand the market share of go pro now. How much do they sale compared to dji and insta 360 in terms of action cameras? Is Go pro still dominating?
Almost bought my first Gopro, but than I learned you need to buy another device between 70-100 bucks to record with an external microphone. The DJI Osmo 3 now was my first choice because it just needs a 5 bucks adapter doing the same and the camera seems better.
Holy crap, that quote (edit: those quotes) from the founder is (are) unreal. To so openly admit your elementary knowledge of the most basic market dynamics (price and demand) is frightening. I imagine it’s stakeholders felt sick when that unfolded.
I live in a county that is dark for 4 months in the winter.
95% of the time, I use DJI for action situations in low to no light, in deep forest.
5% of the time, I use GoPro as a stationary camera for vlogging during the summer, with the sun directly overhead, when it's not too warm or cold.
Product marketing manager here.. GoPro needs to study the jobs to be done framework.
Apple once made a huge mistake by thinking since iTunes had a majority of the digital music space that people actually liked iTunes. Then they released the iPhone 3G which was a platform that allowed Spotify to take one of their main business units away from them.
Awesome! Can’t wait to watch
The guy who made Oakely glasses is the same guy who started the RED cinema camera company. They are totally unrelated, and he had no previous schooling on those subjects. The founder of gopro seems like a very similar guy. He does it because it's a cool idea, and if he gets rich along the way, why not. I can easily see gopro go into a totally abstract market, like if they incorporate nightvision action cams. Could see alot of hunting and military contracts. Or teaming up with a VR company to make AR/XR headsets, they already have good small cameras, lens correction software and high end LCDs. There is alot that can happen very quick, but only if 'its cool' enough.
I wouldn't say GoPro fell. They just don't have a Monopoly anymore. have competition now, and have a saturated market, so there aren't many more buyers they could tap into.
exactly, this is a perfect rebuttal. It is a similar concept in the home improvement industry, Home Depot used to be king, and then Lowes, AceHardware started to slow chip at their moat. Now They have real competition which helps only the consumers
Disagree. i don't own a gopro now but want two "adventure cameras" to capture traveling. I feel like the top products are insta360 and dji mini 3. I didnt even consider gopro.
Kinda like Hewlett Packard and inkjet printing. They invented the technology in the 80s, and were the industry leader peaking in the late 90s. But by the early 2000's there was lots of other competition, and printing in general started to decline with paperless gaining traction. HP also had a terrible CEO at the time (Carly Fiorina) who sold off all of HPs other core competencies to focus competition instead in the consumer PC market (against Dell). Turned into a loosing proposition, and HP has been on the decline for decades....
@@Rudy1150okay ccp bot
Agreed
I bought the first go pro, but the lower version without LCD.
Mine broke just 2 hours after use while riding on an ATV.
Was getting an error code (on the light) for overheat. Let it sit for for 20mins, in the nice 70f weather. Never came back on....
Then like 3 months later, my friend, who i also brought a gopro for, had hers die, due with the same overheat error code, during the fall, was like 45f she said and had it on for like 30mins out while ATVing...
Never bought one and never will by one again. Had no support, didn't honor warranty claim. They said i misused the product...
At least i didn't get some fun footage :) Was amazing for back in 2010!
Edit: a few years later i took it apart, i think one of caps overheated and popped. I most likely could have repaired it but i had already found a better camera
I respect Woodman’s statement. Maybe the bar is low, but being frank about your mistakes is not something we get out of most execs. I’ll take this over the usual round of PR gaslighting when things are going poorly.
In the past when the word action camera comes to mind, people would associate it with GoPro . That was how strong was the brand .
It is not surprising GoPro continue to struggle because of stiff competition and Gopro did not further innovate and evolve their products .
Fascinating!
This video is not about Go-Pro. It is not about business.
It is about - for me at least - understanding the world you are in.
I have no need of a Go-Pro.
I am not a business-person.
I am, however, fascinated by the concept of people (of myself) understanding the world I am a very small part of.
In my opinion, the maker(s) of this video - I have no idea how many of them there are or what their respective roles were - have "captured" (forgive the pun) the very idea of understanding one's role in the world.
So many times throughout this video I was impressed and entertained by the makers' apparent understanding of the above concept.
With thanks. I will almost certainly re-watch this in the near future to better absorb (I have poor retention) the ideas herein.
I worked in skydiving for a number of years and basically they got cheap and saturated the market. No one was really using 4k video, but they went there - the biggest problem most people had with 8 and 9 was crashing, not getting video, and shutting off.
GoPro is in a dark spot right now, ever since DJI has entered the action camera market they have had the most potential ever. I think that GoPro is gonna get dethroned sooner or later by DJI.
Also worth noting is the constantly lack of reliability of their products that made is easier for other competition to step in.
Awesome Video!!! Keep up the GREAT WORK!!!!
GoPro has become an Apple within the action camera world, model after model that adds nothing more and in fact it is just more of the same but costing 10x more.
Companies do not learn from other companies mistakes it looks like.
Gopro have some loyal customers that still bought Hero 12 and think it's amazing compared to 11 and 10. DJI have done everything right, and for 2023 the best action camera you can get is Osmo Action 4.
Please do not underestimate the impact that this product has had on our culture.
All I know about the last few generations of GoPro products is that people are constantly complaining about unreliability. Cameras are overheating, simply stop recording, etc. If cannot rely on your action cam to actually capture the shot, all the bells and whistles do not matter.
I've owned several action cameras, and now operate a GoPro MAX 360 and a Hero12 Black. They are rugged and reliable. They are easy to operate, sync and have a great accessory system and aren't much more expensive than competitors. I don't enjoy editing the huge 8K 360 videos but whatever.
Hey, thanks for a great video! I think it would be interesting if you covered DJI, the guys who made drones available to the market. Also any of the big military tech companies should also be interesting
Heres the part im still missing in the video, who is the replacement? Sony? Canon? Red? They still are the only action camera aside from made insta360 ive heard of in the last 5 years. Someone like myself a snowboarder and mountain biker i still see gopro as really the only option and im just waiting to get a new session style camera with stabilization.
they competitor is DJI. i really don't understand how you can not acknowledged that
@@adz-ql6kvI think it is because GoPro is a name people who actually use them trust.
I had the GoPro 960. An early model that was budget. About 5 years later the lens was damaged (my own fault, or rather my sons) and I looked at getting a replacement. This video hits the nail on the head as I was overwhelmed with the product range, and disappointed by the huge jump in costs of the models versus what I'd paid for my 960 version several years previously. I'd not expected prices to increase given you'd think costs would either reduce or stay similar as the company improves their manufacturing processes and supply chains. In the end I bought a cheap Chinese "SJ" model which did what I need - recorded bike rides as a kind of dash cam.
As long as GoPro isn't fixing overheating with its units and not putting larger sensors in their cameras they will be done.
The drone thing was brutal. I think the first Mavic was announced 2 or 3 days after the Karma. Watching DJI swing hammer on them like that was brutal. Even if it worked, the Karma would have been the most DOA piece of tech after the NGage.
I wasn't flying drones yet at that time so I don't even remember the Karma.
@@michaellefevers4248 There was a 3-day window where anyone cared at all about the Karma. You're not alone in missing it. As soon as the Mavic was announced, it was an antique.
I'm happy I dodged that one! 🤣@@JJKoester
This really reminds me of DJI. DJI like GoPro literally owns their market. DJI pioneered consumer drones and basically owns 90% of the market share. But the reason why I think DJI will still thrive is that their branching from just consumer products. DJI drones are used in various industries like agriculture and surveillance. GoPro doesn’t have much of a use outside of consumers. But one thing I always thought about was using GoPros for body cams…
overheat is a big problem
I think one of GoPros strengths (small form factor) is also their biggest drawback. Yes, you can use the app on your phone to control the camera, but it's still a separate device that is cumbersome. I'd rather just use the remote to turn recording on and off, but you'd still lose the smart phone ability of easily changing camera modes etc.
DJI is much more than just drones, they are huge on other segments.
GoPro brand is just seen as a resistant portable camera maker, something very niche now that (less resistant) are on everyone's pockets.
as a gopro user frustrated by the Quik app bugs, and as a Romanian developer, I am glad their development is outsourced to Romania - I have an interview next week with them.. I am going to fix those bugs myself 😁
I use a Hero 5 Black that I've had for years. I went diving with someone who brought a Hero 10 and we shared video footage with each other. I was surprised at how little the difference is between two models that are 5 generations apart, at least for underwater videos.
These days I don't see myself replacing my Hero 5, but if I have the cash I would probably get a unit by dji.
They're still a rare company that becomes synonymous with their niche, which is respectable.
Like how you can say "kleenex" for facial tissue or a rotary tool can be referred to as a "Dremmel."
But this really says more about the product's legacy and peak than its actual success.
Dremmel is a brand? Holy cow
@@TheWizardGamezyeah and they don’t even make the best rotary tools 😂
I am a teacher who knows little about business but your videos are so interesting that they make want to learn more!!
The session was a absolute DREAM. I really with they could bring that back. That was such an awesome shape for quadcopters
A GoPro dashcam could do really well if they focus on image quality and ease of use. But they would need to get one out soon as there are dashcam companies that are starting to address this market
It seems to me like IPOs are just the owners of the company taking money out of the company for their own use. Then getting crownfunded debt to cover that "expense" plus have the company get some extra money to invest in itself... all in the form of crowdfunding a loan to the company.
Then that crowdfunded debt gets passed around in a 0-sum 0-value-generation game like an NFT where everone pretends that passing around the claim to a % of the debt is somehow generating value.
And then instead of paying back that crowdfunded debt through stock buybacks or getting aquired by a private company... the company just never pay it back and instead plays this silly game of showing growth in analytics even though the growth of the company isnt useful information to the public about when its claim to a debt the company owns will actually be repaid.
It's like a silly ritual pretending there is a free money glitch by just passing things around while generating nothing new. And a ritual of showing growth that is irrelevent for when the IPO debt will be repaid back to the public.
One mistake gopro has made is not embracing the drone community more. Sure, they have intermittently with the older sessions and most recently with the gopro 10 bones ( but that letter is only available in USA, so missing out on alot of potential revenue), but it still feels like the drone community is an afterthought. I guarantee, if gopro continued to expand on their drone focused gopros, that they would corner that market.
I think the Mini 11 is their response to the drone community
I'm satisfy with GoPro Hero 3 and still use it until today.
What amazing product.
So, what action camera is recommended then? I am looking for one for my July cruise...was looking art the gopro12, but now I am not sure...help!
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Tim Cook must been laughing so hard learning GoPro's story lol
Tim Cook is not a visionary. He rides coattails. When you think about it, what features does Tim have to add to apple every year? he's the kind of guy who takes away IO ports. Apple has to do very little because the customer base are religious zealots who are easily controlled by fantasy.
And I don't know why your video was selected for me by you tube, but I like it. Used to be photographer, even taught photography, and wondered about the rise and fall of camera brands. For me, it was specs. For most people, I just don't know.
I've got a GoPro hero 5 black that I still use but will probably get something else next. Also I didn't buy it myself, they always were quite expensive in Australia $600 for mine back in 2016 - I got it as a present. While it has good quality for what it is, 4k no stabilisation or 2k60 with stabilisation it's not bad. Also good that it has removable batteries and is easy to use, but what this video never touched on is the reliability is not great, while it doesn't overheat like the newer ones, it will randomly stop recording audio when it goes into wind cut mode so you get silent when it gets noisy and there's no indication of any issue. Also the battery is very small and to charge it while it's mounted requires you to remove it out of the cage and remove the cable access door. Also they stopped firmware updates not long after I bought it and they discontinued the PC app which was very buggy to begin with not long after, I still use it to import the videos though as it's easy to use for that. Another strange issue I've come across is the GoPro videos won't natively play on the Plex app on Chromecast TV, they transcode but play fine direct on emby on the LG TV.
Bizarre how a company that has a monopoly blamed its failure on being a monopoly.
Im shocked that they didnt make splashes into drones. There's probably good overlap there (compact and resilient video cameras of decent video quality). Now we see all these upstarts like DJI finding success in drones and branching out into cameras, encroaching on GoPro's territory.
Edit: ah you covered the reason for it - it took them 9 years to realize that they could use their camera tech as a platform. Oof.
Their drone that they did try to make was quite the failure, unfortunately (however, I have heard some say they loved it). I think one of the smartest things they could do is lean into the drone community more going forward.
The Hero7 is the most reliable camera they've ever came out with, and it covers all my needs in an action camera. I've used newer versions from friends and they are simply not nearly as reliable as my Hero7. Hypersmooth 1.0 is good enough, too, it's a fallacy that you even need the latest/greatest. Until GoPro can make another model as reliable as the Hero7 with all the features of the competing brands, I'll continue to use the Hero7.