Pod Insights The Vergecast GoPro CEO Nick Woodman on how to compete without competition About this episode GoPro CEO Nick Woodman joins The Verge's Nilay Patel and Sean O'Kane to discuss GoPro's recent launches, occupying a space with few competitors, and why it pulled out of the drone market.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Nilay Patel? This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Dell. Before we start, here's a word from Dell.
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0:30 Nilay Patel? Hey, everybody. It's Neil from The Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, Sean O'Kane and I interviewed Nick Woodman, who's the CEO of GoPro. Now, you're probably extremely familiar with GoPro. They make all the action cameras. They basically are the market for action cameras. They don't have a lot of great competition. So Nick and Sean and I talked about the fact that GoPro had to learn how to understand what their customers wanted, because when people don't buy a GoPro, they just don't buy anything else. There's no competition for GoPro to learn from. That was super interesting. We talked about that for a long time. GoPro also just announced that they're moving their production out of China for cameras that are going to ship to the US. We pushed him to tell us where that production is going. You'll see how he answered. And we talked a lot about the future of GoPro.
1:14 Nilay Patel? If you remember, about two years ago, GoPro was expanding. They were making content. They were making the Karma drone. All of that has ended. They're refocusing on their cameras. Nick had a lot to say about that. Super interesting interview about how you run a company that you started yourself out of a van in 2002 and grow it into a company like GoPro. Check it out.
1:35 Nilay Patel? So tell us, you're in New York. You're hanging out. You came to visit us. What's going on with GoPro?
1:39 Speaker 02 Well, what's going on with GoPro? It's the holidays. So it's the most exciting time of the year for us. You know, we just recently launched our Hero 7 line of cameras and Hero 7 Black is killing it. It's the best-selling GoPro out of the gates ever. So I'm here in New York to help promote it and spread some holiday cheer and make sure everybody's aware of how. Unreal our new Hero 7 Black is.
2:01 Nilay Patel? Real quick, tell us about the Hero 7 Black. Why is it the fastest on GoPro?
2:04 Speaker 02 You're gonna let me pitch it?
2:05 Nilay Patel? You got like five seconds.
2:06 Speaker 02 Okay, alright. It's the best selling GoPro out of the gates. I think largely because of HyperSmooth, which is a breakthrough in video stabilization. Our engineers came up with a way to build gimbal-like stabilization into the camera itself. It's the best video stabilization that's ever been in a camera at any price point. Not just a GoPro. And that's awesome for our brand, awesome for our product development teams, our engineering teams, because this is a major breakthrough. It solves one of the biggest pain points of filming video, which is eliminating the shake.
2:46 Speaker 02 Previously, our customers needed to use a three-axis gimbal that would cost $200 to $300. It was an extra device that you needed to charge, an extra device you needed to carry with you, not easily mountable. And to build that level of stabilization into the camera itself is a major breakthrough. And we kept the price of the camera the same at $399. So it supercharges the value of Hero 7 Black.
3:10 Nilay Patel? So I have a lot of questions about GoPros and who buys them and how big that market is. But just a really simple question. You put out a new GoPro, it's got HyperSmooth. How do you go tell the existing audience of GoPro consumers about it? What's the strategy to go talk to them?
3:23 Speaker 02 We actually mixed it up this year. In previous years, when we would launch a new product, we would do big brand campaigns that would feature the name of our product. And we'd put out videos captured with the new flagship GoPro. But we didn't do a very good job of telling people what made the new GoPro so special. Our campaigns at launch weren't very feature-focused. And we got a lot of feedback from customers that they loved the brand, but they didn't really understand how the product changed from year to year. And for Hero 7 Black, we did a 180 and created a very feature-centric campaign. Still produced amazing jaw-dropping launch videos. But we celebrated the...
4:09 Speaker 02 The features that are namely hypersmooth, superphoto, you can now stream live from a GoPro. Features like this and our voice control and the fact that the camera is waterproof without a housing to 30 feet. And these are things that a lot of people didn't even know. And we took for granted that they knew, we thought it was obvious and they didn't know that a GoPro could do these things. As a result, we saw the engagement at launch and the understanding and customer appreciation around the new features dramatically higher than in previous years. So we've evolved a lot as marketers. But at the same time, we brought the brand punch that people love us for and you know, GoPro is as much of a lifestyle brand as it is a technology company. So it's important that we just don't get too
4:51 Speaker 02 producty and featurey. GoPro is really about inspiring people to get after it and live a bigger life and capture and share it. And I think we nailed it this year with launch.
5:00 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I always think that balance between the sort of alphabet soup of feature names and what you can actually do with it and whether people know what those features are is I'm always curious how people make that balance. I mean, we cover phone companies, we cover Apple and Samsung and they will just fire feature names at you until you're numb and you're like, I will upgrade, fine, I will upgrade my phone.
5:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, or you'll just say, I don't care.
5:23 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
5:24 Speaker 02 I'm already too featured out, too teched out as it is, I don't care and I'm not going to buy it. And that's the other side of the coin. And so as a marketer, it's really important, I think, to excite people, engage people, tell them what they need to know, but do it in an entertaining fashion. Even if they're not interested in your product, you entertain them. And they walk away with an appreciation of your brand where they don't feel like they wasted their time listening to your product pitch.
5:55 Nilay Patel? Okay, so let's do some hardcore content now. So everyone's favorite GoPro content, it's tariffs and manufacturing. So you announced this morning and Sean knows.
6:08 Speaker 02 We're getting to my favorite part of my job right here.
6:10 Nilay Patel? Yeah, exactly. The tariffs part of your job.
6:12 Speaker 02 Fired up.
6:12 Nilay Patel? But you're moving the production of GoPro cameras that are destined for the United States out of China.
6:19 Speaker 02 Nicely said, yes.
6:21 Nilay Patel? Cameras that are going elsewhere in the world are going to stay in China.
6:24 Speaker 02 That's right. We're diversifying our production. Potential for tariffs actually is.
6:30 Speaker 02 Been a catalyst for us to analyze our entire supply chain and look for efficiencies and consider the benefits of diversification. And what we found is that it makes sense for us to move some of our manufacturing out of China for reasons that go beyond tariffs. There's benefits that come from being diversified and where we build our products. And it does help make us more immune to policy shifts in the future, whether these current tariffs happen or not. It's just a smart approach to our business. So we shared today that we're going to be moving our US-bound production, that is GoPros that are bound for the US market.
7:11 Speaker 02 We'll be moving the majority of that production out of China by summer.
7:16 Nilay Patel? Where are you moving it to?
7:18 Speaker 02 We haven't shared that yet.
7:19 Nilay Patel? This is the United States? And that is the question, right?
7:23 Speaker 02 No, we haven't shared we're moving it to.
7:26 Nilay Patel? Is that because you don't know yet or because you're not sharing it yet?
7:30 Speaker 02 We're still in discussions with who we're moving with.
7:34 Nilay Patel? Is there some reason that you're not just gonna up and say we're moving it to Kansas? Right? You're looking at other parts of the world as well?
7:41 Speaker 02 Yes. There are strategic reasons why we're not sharing where we're moving it yet.
7:46 Nilay Patel? I understand.
7:47 Speaker 03 Is this what you dreamed you'd be doing 15 years ago when you were driving around in your like famous VW van, like launching the company, like talking tariffs, dealing with trade war headaches?
7:59 Speaker 02 Well, if you told me that I was gonna be dealing with this back when I was driving around my Volkswagen, you know, opening up GoPro accounts at surf shops and ski shops and whatnot, I would have said, well, that's pretty freaking cool that the business is gonna get that big that this is gonna become an issue.
8:16 Nilay Patel? Yeah. All right, well, let's talk about big and small. So about two years ago, you were kind of a larger business. You had more product lines. You had the Karma drone. You were doing some content stuff.
8:27 Speaker 02 We had more employees and we were building more products, but we were doing similar amounts of revenue. So we were working really hard to not grow the business. So now that we're more focused, we're actually selling more cameras and growing again. So it's just, it's good to be focused in building a better product for the customers that want it the most.
8:48 Nilay Patel? That does seem like the theme. So over the past years, there's been aggressive focus on, we make these cameras, we know who they're for, we're going to learn what those people want, and we're going to sell more cameras, and we're not going to do these other distractions. Is that the plan going forward is just continued aggressive focus? Or are there other things? And we were joking about podcasts, or you know, like, hey, GoPros are great, but we can make a line of podcasting equipment because that's a big audience, too. Or are you staying focused?
9:12 Speaker 02 We're staying focused. GoPro is growing again because we have a better understanding of and appreciation for who our customer is and what they really want from us. And we're working with our customers more closely than we ever have before to understand what they want in the next GoPro. When you're spinning fewer plates, you can do a much better job of spinning the plate, the most important plate, on behalf of your customer. And as far as how do we grow it from here, we've got a lot of room to grow internationally, awareness of GoPro. There's a lot of consumer demand globally because people are active around the world, and the more active you are, the more you need a GoPro. That's a
9:52 Speaker 02 big shift for us, I'd say, is recognizing that we set out to be the world's leading activity capture company. Not everybody in the world needs a GoPro. We recognize that. When we went public, we tried to make GoPro as broadly relevant and appealing as possible and tried to reach everybody, arguably at the expense of our best customers and the customers that need us the most. And those customers are people who are active and who are also interested in capture. And the activity markets and the capture markets are two big markets, and where they intersect is our super customer.
10:30 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
10:31 Speaker 02 And we're focused on super-serving those customers. There's hundreds of millions of them around the world in our market, and we've only sold 30-plus million GoPros since we launched the first HD Hero in 2009. So there's a lot of customers yet to reach, and we're finding that.
10:48 Speaker 03 And something else you've been doing, which is another thing that I like honestly found hard to believe when you first started talking about this was over the last two years, you've really kind of revamped trying to basically building up customer insights team inside the company and trying to figure out the best way to understand like who is using, because you said not everybody needs a GoPro, but now you seem like you finally have an idea of like who does.
11:13 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
11:14 Speaker 03 And that seems to be coming from the fact that like you're you're now able to see like who's using what modes, what modes aren't they using, you know, like all these things that like you weren't actually really working, these data points you weren't really working with before, which I would imagine is probably nice to have all that now.
11:30 Speaker 02 Oh, absolutely. We're very fortunate that we were successful early on with GoPro and our gut seemed to be right all the time. And this worked for, call it 12 years.
11:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:45 Speaker 02 The negative to that is that you think you're always going to be right. And wow, we must be really smart and really creative and really good at this. And because you never needed to use customer research to be successful, you don't know how important it is. And I think that one of the most important things for an entrepreneur and any team to learn is that sure, when you're inventing something that's never existed before, a product or service that's never existed before, it does take a lot of gut to put it out into the market and understand what the consumer wants. But as soon as you release it, the market, your customer, starts telling you what they want it to be and they start to give you immediate feedback.
12:29 Speaker 02 And at that point, once your product or service is live, you really need to start to transition to being what I call a passionate shepherd of innovation, if you will, in that you need to still dream on behalf of your customer and you need to still invent the future, but you need to include your customer's opinion in that process. And don't give up your gut, but inform your gut with solid feedback from your customer. And don't let your previous success as a gut-driven business fool you. If you really want to continue to to grow and expand, you really need to include your customer in the process. And that took us a long time to learn.
13:14 Nilay Patel? So when we were prepping for this interview, Sean shared an interesting quote that I want you to talk about, which is you don't have like a great competitive set. So when people don't buy a GoPro, they don't go buy something else. They just leave the market. Procast listeners will tell you, like, I bang the drum of like this market, every market needs great competition constantly. I think it's good for everybody, including consumers. How did, how did you come to the conclusion that you didn't have enough competitors and you needed to go talk to the customer more directly? Because that is fascinating to me.
13:44 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, a real challenge for us is, as you noted, not having a direct competitor means the only data we have is our own. We don't have anybody else out there who's marketing to drive awareness and grow demand for these types of products. It's largely all been on us. Historically, haven't had a direct competitor that's been big enough to help us test pricing, to understand pricing sensitivity. So really, it's been a bit of trial and error on our own part to learn what are pricing ceilings, what are the features that are really going to drive adoption, drive upgrade and so forth. And for the first 12 years of GoPro, we didn't
14:29 Speaker 02 experiment very much. We, we had a winning formula and we just kept repeating that year over year over year and, and we grew and everything was terrific. And you see, if you're a historian of GoPro, you'll see as soon as we started to experiment with product lineup and with different price points, the, the springs started to come out of the, you know, you kind of take, take the watch apart. Like, oh, this is a beautiful watch. I want to take the face off and see how it works. And then boom, the springs pop out. And we spent the last three years putting the springs back in. And it's been all on us because we, there was nobody else that was being more successful that we could use as a model to help us understand what, what business we should get back to.
15:10 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
15:11 Speaker 02 And that, you know, should be a business school case study on both the benefits and perils of being your own market. And so when we would make a product or a pricing decision that went awry, you would, you would actually see our market shrink. And it would look like GoPro, the market, the TAM for activity cameras is shrinking.
15:32 Nilay Patel? That's a total accessible market.
15:33 Speaker 02 And it's like, well.
15:34 Nilay Patel? So I'm just, I'm unpacking the acronym.
15:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, total, total addressable market. And yeah, our market's shrinking because we are the market. So if, if we put a less than desirable product out there at a less than desirable price and fewer people buy, the entire market for GoPro does shrink. It doesn't mean that people aren't interested. It just means that we didn't have what they wanted, so they didn't buy. And interestingly, they didn't go and buy it from somebody else.
15:58 Speaker 03 I definitely understand all of this. You did have some like pretty direct competition for a little while. There was Sony.
16:04 Speaker 02 And we still do.
16:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:05 Speaker 02 You know.
16:06 Speaker 03 But other companies were trying to get into the space too.
16:07 Nilay Patel? Sony is not a model of focus.
16:10 Speaker 03 No, totally. But for a minute.
16:12 Speaker 02 Very, very strong brand, though.
16:13 Speaker 03 Yeah. And that was, I think, for a lot of people, an option if they didn't want a GoPro. There were a moment where it seemed like some people were preferring some of the things Sony was doing. But my point being like, for a minute, it looked like Sony, you know, Garmin, we had all these like TomTom, like all these other companies were trying to get into the space. And then all of them seemed to have backed away largely. Why do you think they backed away?
16:34 Speaker 02 We have had a lot of competition. And it started immediately after we launched the HD Hero back in 2009. As to be expected, anytime you, you have a hit new product and you're growing like a weed, people are going to see an opportunity and they're going to come to compete with you. Whatever reason, I have my ideas of why they, they didn't gain much market share. For whatever reason, they didn't. And we still have several competitors globally. There's still big branded names in the business, but you're right, the, the market share that they've achieved has been quite minimal. And as a result, they haven't served as a good reference point for the market to help
17:17 Speaker 02 us understand pricing, necessary product features or, or whatnot. I mean, it is remarkable that for all these years, GoPro has been the market leader. And as you noted, some of these are big brands with big developed engineering capabilities, big global distribution footprints and very strong brands. And I think maybe the, the reason that they, they haven't been successful is that it's not, GoPro isn't just about the product. It's about the movement and the, the inspiration of the brand and, and the, the fact that our go-to-market strategy is.
17:54 Speaker 02 We have our own marketing campaigns and our own marketing budgets, but really the secret of GoPro is our passionate customer base. We have millions of the world's most passionate people using our products and sharing, I can't believe that just happened, moments. And that viral awareness and enthusiasm that results is what fuels our brand. And so if that's what makes GoPro so successful, then a competitor needs to have that to be successful. But if you can't get millions of people around the world using your product in the first place, you're sort of stuck. It's the chicken and the egg. And so fortunately, we were the first one to have the chicken lay the egg, I guess.
18:37 Nilay Patel? Two questions. One, do you ever worry that you're going to become TiVo or Kleenex, where everybody knows what a GoPro is conceptually, but then you go in the store and there's like a cheaper Chinese competitor? Especially as you go into new markets, right? You're going to face a bunch of cheap clones.
18:52 Speaker 02 That's already happened, right? I mean, the cheap clones have happened, but the TiVo or Kleenex phenomena hasn't happened to GoPro. What we've learned through researching our customers is that people research far more than we would have imagined.
19:09 Nilay Patel? We've built our business on that.
19:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, yeah.
19:12 Nilay Patel? Are you a crazy nerd? The Verge is here for you.
19:14 Speaker 02 But it is, even at the entry level, price point, where you think that, oh, people just buy based on price and they don't really research, or they're buying as a gift and they don't really... On the gift front, people don't really research as much, but when you're buying it for yourself, we were floored to see how informed a GoPro customer is. It is not an impulse purchase.
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21:13 Nilay Patel? Thanks to our sponsor Dell. Learn more about Dell Cinema's amazing color and Intel Core i7 processor at dell.com/xps13. That's dell.com/xps13. Hey, everybody. This is Neelai Patel and the editor in chief of The Verge, co-host of The Vergecast. And I want to tell you about Better Worlds, an exciting new science fiction project from The Verge. Look, everything today is so bleak. The news is terrible. The TV shows are grim. Even our superheroes are gritty and dark. But so many great creators and inventors were inspired by golden age science fiction. Shows like Star Trek, writers like Octavia Butler and Isaac Asimov, stories that imagined how science could improve the future. That's Why we at The Verge are launching Better Worlds, a new series of short fiction, audio,
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22:41 Nilay Patel? Extras podcast feed and stay tuned for Better Worlds in 2019.
22:50 Nilay Patel? So I want to talk about the products, particularly how you think about competing with phones, because phone cameras are obviously a thing that keep better and better. But you mentioned something that I think is really interesting and maybe a little crazy to ask about, but your business is driven by sharing. It's driven by people who want to share. We live right now, the end of 2018, in a moment of incredible reckoning for social networks. Not everyone is happy with all of them, YouTube included. We talked to YouTube creators. They're not like in love with their relationship with YouTube. Is that actually a threat to your business that people are rethinking their relationship to Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Twitter?
23:26 Speaker 02 Not so much in the fact that GoPro survives or dies based on the growth of social media. It definitely helps us that people are voracious sharers and consumers of other people's content, other people's experiences. The camera industry was big, and people had a big interest in photo and video before YouTube and before Facebook and before Instagram. And also, the majority of the world consumes, the majority of the world are watchers. They're actually not sharers. If you look at the phenomena of YouTube, for example,
24:09 Speaker 02 and I believe the same is true for Instagram, the majority of people aren't posting, the majority of people are watching other people's posts.
24:18 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
24:19 Speaker 02 We think of our customers' opportunity as we build for doers, and doers influence and inspire watchers. And what's really important is that we serve
24:29 Nilay Patel? Super surf.
24:29 Speaker 02 Super surf, thank you. The doers in the world
24:34 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
24:34 Speaker 02 who really need a GoPro, really value it, and that their success with our camera and their beautiful content that they share goes on to inspire the watchers, who are the majority, and a percentage of watchers convert over to be doers. And so even if social sharing wanes a bit, the doers are still going to be quite extroverted in wanting to display themselves and showcase themselves. So I don't think, I think it would take a really big shift in social sentiment to affect our business.
25:09 Speaker 02 We may not be happy with how some of these businesses have managed themselves, but the majority of us still really love the services that they provide.
25:17 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
25:17 Speaker 02 We just wish that the companies behind the services had a more responsible approach.
25:23 Nilay Patel? That sigh, I think, contained like a full, a full 2018 of thinking about social networks was in the inside of that sigh.
25:30 Speaker 02 We're all there right now.
25:31 Nilay Patel? Yeah. I knew exactly what you meant the second you started sighing. So, let's talk about products, which is the fun part. You obviously make your camera. You know, every year, Apple comes out with a newer, hotter iPhone. Every year, Google comes out with a newer, hotter Pixel. The Pixel's waterproof this year, which is a big upgrade for them. Do you, do you think that you exist next to phones? Like when the analysts are out there in force, saying, who needs GoPro? Everybody has a waterproof phone now. That's not, you don't, it, based on this conversation, it doesn't seem to affect your thinking.
26:01 Speaker 02 The use cases are very different for where you use a phone and where you use a GoPro. And remember, we're building for doers. And at a certain point, what you're doing limits the effectiveness of a phone. And even if a phone can work well in that scenario, you don't necessarily want to put your phone at risk. People have their lives tied up into their phones. And so, for example, you mentioned smartphones becoming waterproof. They're waterproof, but it's more for damage prevention. You don't see people running into the ocean with their phones, right? Or diving into the pool with their phones. It's just, it's not worth it to them to test this thing. And it's just not how people associate using that device.
26:43 Speaker 02 This gets to, back to my point about how we're, we better understand who needs and wants a GoPro. And we're tailoring our business to serve them specifically and recognize that we don't want to compete with a phone. We want to identify those people who need something more than a phone. And we are going to be the company that, that delivers such an amazing solution for them that we feel that, they feel that we're, we exist just for them specifically.
27:09 Nilay Patel? Yeah. So this leads me, I think, right into the, the kind of, the thing that two years ago that happened that I think put you on your current course of focus, which was, it seems very obvious that people who need a GoPro might also be interested in a drone. And so you, you had the Karma drone, it came out, you discontinued it, you recalled it on election night, which was an interesting time to recall it. Are you thinking about that again? It seems very obvious that you'd want a GoPro to fly. Is that just, you're, you're done with it? You're not going to try again?
27:38 Speaker 02 Too small of a percentage of our customers are interested in a drone. A drone takes quite a bit of work. It's quite expensive. They're even in, in, even Karma, which is very easy to fly, takes some thought to. And the consequences of using a drone are high. And all these things add up to a lot of consumers just not wanting it that badly enough to the point where they're going to go buy one. And so when we evaluated the market for drones and where we saw it going, you know, not to mention the regulatory risks and so forth, we just determined that
28:22 Speaker 02 While they're cool, it's just not a big enough market for us to invest in when we see so much upside in our camera business alone and providing a better solution to our customers there. And then, as we mentioned, reinvesting or investing more in marketing to grow the brand and drive awareness around the world. The expense of being in the drone business was such that we wouldn't be able to advance camera technology or our marketing efforts the way we wanted to and just said, there's not enough of a return on investment here. And as a public company, we're here to provide a return for our shareholders. And it's not looking good in the drone business. And so we decided to cut bait.
29:07 Nilay Patel? So this whole conversation, I think, is characterized by focus, right? You focused on this product. People really like it. You said priced it correctly five times.
29:15 Speaker 02 That's really important. Well, think about, just on that note, you know, just as an example of, you know, how hard this can be to, when you are your own market and you're trying to learn how sensitive your market really is. You know, Apple's going through that right now. And this is one of the most sophisticated companies in the world. You'd assume that they've got great consumer research and they've got a really good understanding of what their customer wants. And they're having quite a bit of trouble selling through their new camera line and arguably have priced their products too high and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's on a much bigger scale, but it's
29:59 Speaker 02 very similar to what we went through over the last couple of years. And they do have competition to help them understand pricing dynamics and the market. But at the same time,
30:14 Speaker 02 They don't have competition in some ways because they have such a loyal following and their business is so dependent on their upgrade cycle and so forth. But it's just interesting to consider how tricky this can be, even for presumably the best in the business.
30:31 Nilay Patel? The most sophisticated player.
30:32 Speaker 02 You got it.
30:33 Nilay Patel? I want to end on this. You obviously employ a lot of engineers. You're based here, your production's there, you're moving it. How much of your engineering and your development is your stuff? I think there's a lot of perception out there that you guys just repackage sensors and move on. I know that's not true.
30:49 Speaker 02 It used to be.
30:50 Nilay Patel? If you were in this studio, Nick just looked at me like, you know that's not true. I know it's not true. But how much are you developing the sensor itself versus the software that runs on the sensor versus the ISP? Where is the GoPro effort focused on the camera itself?
31:04 Speaker 02 In the early years, we did rely on whatever was available in the market, whether it was sensor, whether it was a processor. From the early days, we did do our, or had our customers, I should say, do for us our own custom lens development. So we took that on very early on. But no, in the early days, we did the best job of taking market-available components and baking them into a better cake than anybody else. And then we did a better job of marketing than anybody else and of growing distribution and so forth. That's true in the early days.
31:45 Speaker 02 That really started to change, I'd say, with HERO3. And then certainly now, HERO7 Black is only possible because of the strength of our own engineering teams. GP1 is our own custom-designed chip. We did do it with a partner, but we drove that entire design. And it's why hypersmooth video stabilization is possible. You can't... Hyper smooth isn't something that another company is just going to be able to go out and produce using whatever chip that they're using and write a software algorithm and make it to work.
32:30 Speaker 02 That's a system that is enabled by both an algorithm or algorithms and the GP1 chip. Our lens technology is all in-house and we don't design our own sensors, but we certainly get a better image out of the sensors that we use than anybody else, thanks to GP1 and thanks to our lens system. And then the overall construct of a GoPro itself is frankly, dude, it's a marvel that we're able to fit so much capability into such a small package, have it be waterproof, have it be insanely durable, have it cool. The thermal capabilities, cooling capabilities of a GoPro are insane.
33:14 Speaker 02 The fact that we get the battery to last as long as it does, on and on and on and on and on. There's so much design and engineering that goes into making a GoPro that frankly, I think we've gapped everybody else. It's a big part of the reason why we've been able to maintain a market leadership position that we've had. It's not easy to do this. I say the biggest thing, you haven't asked this question, but I'll ask it for you. What's the thing that pains me the most is when some consumers criticize us for overcharging for our products. If they knew what goes into designing and building a GoPro, they would never say that.
33:49 Speaker 03 Also, fun tip for anybody listening, there are so many people who sell GoPros around the world that like, honestly, Nick, don't listen. If you're buying it like the sticker price, you're probably doing yourself a disservice. Like so many different, Best Buy, everybody, they all sell GoPros, they all want them to buy them from them.
34:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:07 Speaker 03 So like, if you're not shopping around to get some kind of discount, like you're definitely doing yourself a disservice because they're very easy to find, like packages and stuff. So like, I don't know, I guess I understand.
34:15 Nilay Patel? Buying tips from Sean at the end.
34:16 Speaker 03 Yeah. I've got a quick lightning round if I can.
34:18 Speaker 02 Do it.
34:19 Speaker 03 Before we let you go. Because you've talked a lot about HERO7 Black. We haven't talked a lot about white and silver. You released two other cameras this year. How are they doing and what do you think people like about those over HERO7 Black?
34:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, they're doing really well. I think that we understand our customers fall into certain segments. There are customers that are looking for the lowest cost GoPro. They want to own a GoPro, but they're budget minded and maybe they're not quite sure how much they're going to use it. And I'm really proud of Hero 7 White. It's the best entry level camera we've made. It has Hero 6 level stabilization, which arguably, we should have done a better job of communicating at launch. I think that that was a little lost on people, how good the stabilization is in our White and our Silver products. It's got the best image
35:11 Speaker 02 quality of any 199 price point GoPro. And same for Silver. Silver takes it up to 4K30. Both of these products have much improved audio over previous GoPros. And they have been a bit overshadowed by the strength of Hero 7 Black. I mean, Hypersmooth is just a game changer and it's all anybody wants to talk about, myself included.
35:35 Speaker 03 I used to hate the idea of electronic image stabilization, but I mean, it's definitely converted.
35:41 Speaker 02 It doesn't look electronic.
35:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, no, it looks really good.
35:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, like a gimbal looks more electronic now, because it's got that motorized robotic look. It's funny, now that I watch gimbal footage, I don't like it. I used to love it, but now with Hypersmooth where the camera moves more naturally and it's just the way that, more of the way that you see the world. A gimbal looks forced. No, but to answer your question, White and Silver are doing really well. They're rounding out the best ever lineup we've ever had. And one of the other things that I'm really proud of is that the number of people who are saying it's their first GoPro and that it's so easy to use that they didn't even need instructions, which is another thing I'm really proud of.
36:27 Speaker 02 Because you couldn't say that about a GoPro.
36:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:30 Speaker 02 A few years ago. I apologize, but we were learning and we're getting better at this.
36:34 Nilay Patel? All right, you have one more lightning round, then you have to let Nick go.
36:36 Speaker 03 Okay. What would Karma 2 have looked like?
36:40 Speaker 02 Come on, man.
36:42 Speaker 03 I know, this is what people ask me.
36:44 Speaker 02 This is what we're going to end on?
36:46 Speaker 03 Yeah. This is the thing I'm going to get burned if I don't ask.
36:49 Speaker 02 What would it been?
36:50 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
36:51 Speaker 02 Dude, it would have been the most refined product in this category with the best user experience and it would have, it would have been meshed with our ecosystem seamlessly and you would have just been like, God, GoPro's done it again. But you know what? We're putting that into our cameras now and I believe that's the reaction that you had when you used Hero 7 Black. So as long as we, we wow customers with our camera line, I think we're gonna, we're gonna be A-OK.
37:20 Nilay Patel? Nick, thank you so much for stopping by.
37:22 Speaker 02 All right.
37:23 Nilay Patel? Hopefully we'll see you again soon.
37:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's fun.
37:25 Nilay Patel? All right. Nick Woodman, everybody. Thanks. All right, so that was Nick Woodman, the CEO of GoPro. I've never actually needed a GoPro camera before, but maybe I want to try out this hyper-smooth situation. All right, we're off for the next few weeks, for the holidays. I hope you spend time with your loved ones, hope you get a lot of cool gadgets. We'll see you in the new year.
37:46 Nilay Patel? And now, another word from our sponsor, Dell.
37:48 Speaker 01 The Dell XPS 13 with an eighth-gen Intel Core i7 processor is the laptop for people who never say no to one more episode. With lifelike color, brilliant sound clarity and smooth streaming, Dell Cinema technology makes whatever you love to watch even better. Call 800-BY-DEL to learn more or visit dell.com/xps13. Sponsored by Dell and Intel.
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