The Billionaire GoPro Founder Knew His Startup Would Make It When Two Boys Yelled At Him On The Beach

Action footage and camera company GoPro went public this morning.

The stock was priced at $24, and now it's trading at $33, a 36% pop.

Its founder, self-made billionaire Nicholas Woodman, tells Bloomberg the first time he realized his company would be successful. Two young boys, about 12 years old, yelled out GoPro's slogan to him on the beach. GoPro hadn't done any advertising and it had only launched one product, a bulky wrist camera.

Here's how Woodman remembers that day:

Gopro had just launched our first camera. It was a 35-millimeter, big, bulky, film camera you wore on the wrist. It sold for $19.99 in surf shops.

So I'm checking the surf, wearing the camera, and these two little kids are going out surfing and they're in their wetsuits and they have their surfboards. And they're jogging by me and one of them nudges his friend and says, "Hey look! Dude, he's got a GoPro."

As they run by me they turn around and say, "GoPro! Be a hero!" and throw me a little shocka [hand symbol]. No advertising or anything.

I remember thinking, "They know the slogan. They said it back to me. It's working!" By the way, a 12-year-old surfer is a very hard consumer to reach, so the fact that they were saying it back to me was very meaningful to me.

Here's the video, from Bloomberg: