GoPro
More info
- Creator
- Nick Woodman
- Released
- 2002
- Type
- Action cameras
- Website
- gopro.com
The action camera that turned first-person footage of extreme sports into a genre of its own — and a company that never quite found its next product after it.
Nick Woodman started GoPro in 2002 after a surfing trip where he wanted to film himself on the waves. The first product was a 35mm film camera on a wrist strap; the breakthrough came with the digital Hero models — small, rugged, waterproof cameras that clipped onto helmets, boards and handlebars.
The company went public in 2014 at the height of an action- and YouTube-video boom. Then it got harder: the Karma drone flopped and was pulled in 2018, phone cameras kept improving, and GoPro has repeatedly had to defend its narrow product line. The name is entrenched enough that any small action camera gets lazily called "a GoPro."