Can GoPro Rise Again?

After a dismaying 2015, CEO Nick Woodman is refocusing, betting the company's future on software, new audiences, and a bit of Karma.

After a dismaying 2015, CEO Nick Woodman is refocusing, betting the company's future on software, new audiences, and a bit of Karma.

Nick Woodman, the founder and CEO of GoPro, flew into Vail, Colorado, yesterday on his private jet. He is here for the GoPro Mountain Games, a weekend-long festival of kayaking, rafting, rock climbing, and just about anything else you can do at an off-season ski resort while wearing a mounted action camera. Woodman, whom college buddy and current GoPro colleague Justin Wilkenfeld describes as less "a 9-to-5-type guy" than "a hippie surfer," wanders through the tent-covered meadows wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a tank top alongside throngs of action-sports enthusiasts. Passing a funnel-cake vendor, he sniffs something else in the air. Colorado is a popular destination among the GoPro community not just for the adrenaline rush of extreme sports, but also because of plentiful legal weed. When he asks a GoPro events coordinator what he is doing later, the junior staffer avoids eye contact with his boss, shrugs, and a little too adamantly insists, "Nothing. Why?"

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