Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: Traits, GoPro Case Study, and Peter Drucker's Perspective

This paper discusses the dark side of entrepreneurship, including depression, obsessive need for control, and paranoid tendencies. It explores the GoPro case study and Peter Drucker's perspective on entrepreneurship. The paper also delves into GoPro's competitive advantage and future threats to their strategy.

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Student’s Name
Course Name
Professor’s Name
University Name
City, State
Date

Entrepreneurship 2
Report: Entrepreneurship
PART: A
Executive Summary
This paper commences with a discussion on the dark side of entrepreneurship. The negative
personality traits of entrepreneurs which may ultimately cost them fatally, are discussed, these
being depression, obsessive need to be in control and paranoia. These dysfunctional personality
traits are elaborate in this paper. This paper also validates the statement of Peter Drucker as is
manifested in the attributes of the founder of GoPro, Woodman of discipline, passion, the gritty
determination to succeed even after first failing, and dedication of a lot of time on his project are
some attributed discussed here. The paper also discusses the competitive advantage gained by
GoPro from their marketing processes. From information obtained from their website, GoPro has
invested in corporate social responsibility involving their employees, superior products and
drones. The paper lastly discusses four threats to the GoPro’s company strategy and their
solutions. These emerge from traditional manufacturers of cameras, smartphone manufacturers,
possible saturation of the US market in future, and their narrow focus on only one aspect of the
trade. Solutions to these threats are duly discussed.
Introduction
This paper discusses four aspects of entrepreneurship. The first aspect discussed here is the
major traits that constitute the dark side of entrepreneurship, whereby depression, obsessive need
to be in control / micromanagement and paranoid tendencies are discussed. References are made
to the GoPro case study in this section. The paper also discusses Peter Drucker’s statement on

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entrepreneurship as it relates to the qualities of Woodman, the entrepreneur behind GoPro. The
paper then discusses the ways in which the GoPro Company has been able to gain a competitive
advantage over their rivals on their marketing processes; with 4 different ways being discussed
here. In the last section, the paper discusses the future threats to the GoPro Company’s strategy.
Four threats to the company and possible solutions to these are discussed.
Question 1: The major traits that constitute the dark side of entrepreneurship.
Introduction
i. Depression
Depression occurs most of the time when an entrepreneur is beginning his business, or when
the business experiences great losses. Entrepreneurs are people who enjoy the good times when
their businesses are doing well and they therefore find it very difficult to cope with the bad times.
In the GoPro case, Woodman must have undergone some depression when his first company,
Funbug, went down with $3.9 million of investors’ money. This is particularly so when he had
all the hopes of making a successful business launch, only for his company to go under. This is
expressed in his words, “I’d never failed at anything before except computer science engineering
classes,” which express how disappointed he was with his first major failure in life. The
depression is further compounded by thoughts of self-doubt which he expressed himself, “…
maybe I’m not capable of doing this.” This is a typical example of how depression can set into
an entrepreneur after experiencing failure. The startup of some businesses calls for the
entrepreneur to put in a lot of resources: finance, material and time. The entrepreneur may find
himself owing every other party – family, friends, and the banks. He may have well not made a
breakthrough in the business or the business may be falling into bad times due to depressed

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economic times or other external factors that may by contrary to ‘optimistic’’ projections that
may have been set by the entrepreneur (Akpoviroro and Amos 2018). This may really send the
entrepreneur into a lot of depression and in some cultures; this may lead to mental illness or
death by suicide, particularly in cultures where failure is seen as shame. Depression is therefore,
a major dark trait that happens to engulf entrepreneurs when times are bad for their businesses.
They therefore, need to thicken their skin and stay put even when all is collapsing around them.
ii. Obsessive need to be in control
Some entrepreneurs, particularly those who start businesses by themselves and fail to involve
other parties in owning the company e.g. by sale of shares, have a tendency of wanting to be
overbearing in their control of their business. For this reason, they like to be involved in every
little decision or process that the business is involved in. much as they have the post of chief
executive officer or managing director, they fail to focus more on strategic issues for their
businesses but are instead deeply involved in the nitty-gritty of their company: why the van’s oil
was not changed, why a certain customer did not return to make business, where to procure the
next supply of stationery for the office(Arregle et al 2015).
In the case study given, despite GoPro grossing $350,000 in its first full year of sales,
Woodman did almost everything himself, with little assistance from his wife. He was, “the all-in-
one product engineer, R&D head, salesman and packaging model.” This is typical obsession with
wanting to be in control and being a micromanager on the part of the entrepreneur. He must have
undergone a lot of pressure and fatigue in that one year, making the $350,000 while performing
all the tasks of the company himself. Although it is remarkable that he was able to make the tidy
sum of $350,000 alone that year, in other circumstances he could have easily fatally broken

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down. Although micromanagement or obsession with control has its downside, it also helps the
entrepreneur to understand each part of his business from a practical perspective, as was the case
with Woodman.
This is despite the fact that the entrepreneurs have employed people to attend to these very
small issues that they preoccupy themselves looking into. If you ask them why they do so, they
will tell you that a good business owner has to know every detail of what happens in his
business. However, the problem is that they make themselves to be one man shows, and in the
process, their employees also resign to letting their ‘know-it-all’ boss to run the show. They are
afraid to exercise their mandate and responsibilities without involving the boss. This is
particularly bad for the company because its top manager, instead of focusing on making the
company grow, has little time for this and is instead spending a lot of time paying attention to the
nitty-gritty of running the company.
i) Paranoid Tendencies
Entrepreneurs who have had a rough rise to the top such as those in competitive
industries are usually very suspicious of other people. They also harbor a great fear, particularly
of failure, and do not just regard failure as a normal thing. Many entrepreneurs will say that they
do not trust anyone, not even their wife or parents. They therefore tend to be paranoid, believing
that they are the only people who mean well for themselves, but other people do not mean well
to them. They therefore find it difficult to trust anyone with anything, be it a thought or material
thing. One manifestation of this paranoid behavior is inability to consult or seek advice where it
is reasonable to seek counsel. Whereas some situation may need consultancy and advice from
other parties, paranoid entrepreneurs stick by their gut and instincts and do not consult because

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they know that doing so would lead to inappropriate advice being solicited and consequently in
failure.
In the case of Woodman, his moment of paranoia came when he offered to sell a majority
of the company to a group of outsiders. With this sale coming in in the depression years of the
2008 financial crisis, the investors sought to lower the valuation of the company but Woodman
would not have any of that. He rightly felt that it was wrong to sell his effort of many years for a
pittance. This is a typical case of paranoia on the part of an entrepreneur. His gut instincts served
him right, as his business continued on an upward trajectory despite the economy performing
badly that year: the company exceeded $8 million in sales that year and has never looked back or
dipped in sales volumes ever since (Pan, Newell and Cui 2017).
Question 2
Peter Drucker and Entrepreneurship and Evidence in the GoPro case study
Evidence abounds in the GoPro case study where Woodman’s personal life shows the
discipline that comes with successful entrepreneurship. On the onset, Woodman was cited to be
‘something of a schemer,’ which is a chief trait among entrepreneurs: entrepreneurs need to
scheme around problems and situations. He also had a passion for surfing, which, although his
parents were not supportive of him engaging in it, he kept following his passion. The
environment in which he stayed, at the University of California, San Diego, which has plenty of
sunshine and water, provided a predisposing factor for him to pursue his passion, surfing
(Doppelt 2017).

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Woodman started out in the world of business with failure on a $3.9 million investment
an online gaming service, Funbug. This did not discourage him, but it instead instilled a strong
sense of determination in him to succeed, and a reality check that that was probably not his line,
as is evident in his words, ‘…maybe I am not capable of doing this…’ The failure was probably
a good thing because it focused him back to surfing.
He also, in the initial phase of his company, took a lot of time to work on his prototype,
which calls literally for focus and discipline on an entrepreneur’s part. At the same time, he was
so scared of failing once again, having failed before with the Funbug venture. However, even in
the midst of negative thoughts of failure, he focuses on success, ‘I was so scared that I would fail
again that I was totally committed to succeed.’ Woodward, like other entrepreneurs, also had
dreams, “I thought to myself, ‘If I made a few hundred grand a year, I’m, like, in heaven.’”
These are the characteristics that kept him going. When the GoPro venture took off, he did not
rush to employ, but he was forced to be, ‘the all in-one product engineer, R&D head, salesman
and packaging model.” This meant that he literally undertook all the functions of the company
with a little help from his wife, Dana.
Like typical entrepreneurs, when he felt that he wanted to sell off part of his company
during the depression of 2008, and yet investors wanted to lower the value of his company, his
pride was hurt and he refused to sell off a part of his company for a lower value. Luckily, the
economy did not hurt the sales of the company - instead, his business registered an upward
trajectory in sales - and his brave gut decision worked to his advantage. This is a key
characteristic of entrepreneurs: making the right judgment call at the right time.

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The company has since recorded organic growth. The preceding paragraphs therefore,
support Peter Drucker’s statement: ‘Most of what you hear about entrepreneurship is all wrong.
It’s not magic; it’s not mysterious; and it has nothing to do with genes. It’s a discipline and like
any discipline it can be learnt’.
PART: B
Question 1
How GoPro has gained a Competitive Advantage from their Marketing Processes
GoPro has done a number of things to ensure that they gain a competitive edge as is discussed as
follows:
i) Products: GoPro has specialized in good cameras which are waterproof and high
resolution and which can capture steady pictures even when the subjects are moving at a
high speed. They have thus established themselves a niche as providers of high quality
cameras and thus their customers turn to them for the best cameras for surfing and related
activities (Kuratko, Hornsby and Hayton 2015). The company has also a robust trade-in
facility where customers can bring in their already bought cameras and get newer
versions by adding some cash. This makes them the place to turn to when a client wants
to upgrade his equipment (Kuratko, Hornsby and Hayton 2015).
ii) Investment in Drones: The Company has also invested in drones which can further
enhance the picture shooting experience. These drones have been introduced after 2014
and they show that the company is moving in sync with the changing times. This means

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that the company has invested in the latest camera technology for their high end market
which can be used to capture precious moments (Selden and Fletcher 2015).
iii) Investment in Corporate Social Responsibility: The Company engages its employee in
worthy causes in the corporate social responsibility section of the corporate entity such as
Crop Trust that is a global seed trust, Panthera, which aims at preserving tigers, Stake like
a Girl, which challenges stereotypes and empowers youth, and Grace, a gorilla
rehabilitation programme in the Congo. All this widen the appeal of the brand, open up
new markets and endears GoPro to groups outside the USA which can easily turn out to
be added customers (Hapenciuc et al 2015).
iv) Customer reward programme: GoPro has established a programme where it awards
customers who take good photos of their exciting moments and post them on the GoPro
website. The best photos are duly rewarded by GoPro. This encourages customers to pay
for GoPro equipment and use it actively if only to get a reward from the company. Thus
customer loyalty to the brand is maintained (Lauto and Valentin 2016).
Question 2
Future Threats to the Company’s Strategy
GoPro Company faces some existential major threats in 2019. These threats, which are external
to the company’s operating environment, are as is elucidated below:
Threat 1: The first threat is from traditional manufacturers of cameras such as previous market
leader Sony who would like to wrestle away the crown for most camera sales from GoPro
(Nurdiansyah, Pratama and Farhan 2016).

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Solution: GoPro therefore needs to up its game and maintain its customers, keep abreast of
developments within its share of technology, i.e. cameras, in order to ensure that it continues to
be the leader among all camera manufacturing companies (Lukkarinen et al 2016).
Threat 2: The other threat is from smartphone manufacturers who are already venturing into
waterproof cameras with high resolution. In fact, if smartphone manufacturers manage to design
a smartphone that is both a phone and a camera for the purposes of surfing, then that would
certainly constitute a serious threat to the survival of the company (Merriam and Grenier 2019).
Solution: The Company also needs to ward off the threat of smartphones taking over its
cameras. This can be done by acquiring or merging with a mobile phone company to produce
stylish mobile phones that contain powerful GoPro cameras. This way, customers will not have
to acquire surf friendly smartphones and walk away from GoPro devices (Selden and Fletcher
2015).
Threat 3: So far, GoPro’s main market is in the USA. This market may be crowded out by
GoPro’s competitors, leaving the company with shrinking revenue for the coming years (Kuratko
and Morris 2018).
Solution: GoPro could consider expanding markets to outside USA, looking for surfing markets
in South America, Canada and Europe to start with, then to Asia, India and Africa. This way, the
company will establish itself as a multi-market company that can draw income from many parts
of the world (Gherhes et al 2016).

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Threat 4: The Company has narrowly focused on devices to capture life’s best moments only,
and no other related accessories. This therefore, means that the company relies on a very small
part of the customer’s experience to stay afloat. It customers’ tastes change, then that is it.
Solution: The Company should consider employing an integrated approach to surfing, skydiving
and related ventures. For instance, the company could consider making GoPro surfboards and
biplanes, establishing GoPro surfing resorts and adventure sites so that the company can have
multiple streams of income from multiple products which are complementary to the surfing and
skydiving experience (Zhou, Vredenburgh and Rogoff 2015).
Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper has discussed three negative traits of entrepreneurs that
constitute their dark side, and elaborated how they contribute to inhibited growth of their
enterprises. Additionally, the paper has also discussed the attributes that make entrepreneurs tick,
according to Peter Drucker’s statement. These are drawn from the GoPro case study, basing on
Woodman’s attributes. Additionally, the paper has used recent information on the GoPro website
to show the competitive edge that puts GoPro ahead of its rivals. The paper has ended with a
discussion of threats to the GoPro business in the near future and their possible solutions.

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