Nick Woodman | |
|---|---|
 Woodman in 2016 | |
| Born | June 24, 1975 |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of California, San Diego |
| Occupation(s) | Founder and CEO, GoPro |
| Spouse | Jill R. Scully |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Dean Woodman Concepcion Socarras |
| Relatives | Irwin Federman (step-father) |
Nicholas D. Woodman (born June 24, 1975) is an American businessman, and the founder and CEO of GoPro. [1]
Woodman is the son of Concepcion (née Socarras) and Dean Woodman. [2] [3] [4] [5] His father was born into a Quaker family and co-founded the investment bank Robertson Stephens; [2] [6] [7] and his mother is of Hispanic descent and re-married Irwin Federman, General Partner of U.S. Venture Partners in 1992. [3] Woodman grew up in Menlo Park, California [8] and Atherton, California, [9] attending the Menlo School, where he graduated in 1993. [10] He earned a bachelor's degree in visual arts and a minor in creative writing from the University of California, San Diego in 1997. [9] [11] [12]
After school, Woodman founded two startups, both of which never fully made it off the ground. The first was a website called EmpowerAll.com, which attempted to sell electronic goods for no more than a $2 markup, and the second was Funbug, a gaming and marketing platform that gave users the chance to win cash prizes. [13] Woodman received a $235,000 investment from his father, [14] an investment banker in Silicon Valley, [15] and used his parents' connections in venture capital to launch GoPro. [16]
While in Australia and Indonesia on a surf trip, he used a 35mm camera attached to the palm of his hand by a rubber band to try to capture his surfing activities on film. [12] Seeing that amateur photographers like him, who wanted to capture high quality action photos of their activities, had difficulties because either they could not get close enough to the action or were unable to purchase appropriate quality equipment at affordable prices, his trip became his inspiration to found GoPro. [12] His solution was to develop a belt that would attach the camera to the body. [12] To finance the business, Woodman borrowed $200,000 from his father, who still owned a 6.4% stake in May 2014. [17] Nick also borrowed $35,000 and a sewing machine from his mother, which he used to sew camera straps while experimenting with early designs. [18] Woodman and his future wife Jill generated an additional $10,000 by selling beads and shell necklaces they bought in Bali (for $1.90) out of their old Volkswagen bus along the California coast (for $60). [19] His desire for a camera system that could capture close up footage inspired the GoPro name, as, at that time, the only surfers who were filmed were the professionals. [20] [21]
The first GoPro product was a 35mm film camera developed by a Chinese company named Hotax that incorporated Woodman's custom wrist strap, slight modifications to the housing, and the GoPro logo. Hotax sold Woodman the rebranded camera for $3.05 and the cameras retailed for about $30. [22] Woodman would go about selling his products while using his 1971 Volkswagen Bus that he named The Buscuit as his mobile home. [23] The product has since evolved into a compact digital camera that supports WiFi, can be remotely controlled, has waterproof housing and records to a microSD card.
In 2004, Woodman made his first big sale when a Japanese company ordered 100 cameras at a sports show. [12] [19] Thereafter, sales doubled every year, [11] and in 2012, GoPro sold 2.3 million cameras. [12] In 2005, Woodman appeared on QVC to sell his GoPro Hero. [24] In 2004, GoPro had about $150,000 in revenue which grew to about $350,000 in 2005. In December 2012, the Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn purchased 8.88% of the company for $200 million which set the market value of the company at $2.25 billion making Woodman, who owned the majority of the stock, a billionaire. [12] [19] On June 26, 2014, GoPro went public – closing the day at $31.34 a share. In 2014, Woodman was the highest paid US chief executive, paying himself $235 million while GoPro earned profits of $128 million. [25] [26] [27]
In 2015, GoPro formed a partnership with the NHL in which the NHL would use GoPro products to improve the viewing experience for fans. [28] Woodman was invited to speak at various tech conferences, and in October 2015, Woodman was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and wore a GoPro camera for the entirety of the interview. [29] Woodman appeared as a shark investor in the sixth season of the show Shark Tank . [30] Woodman had invested $125,000 as of November 2015 on Shark Tank on two investments. [31]
GoPro made a series of job cuts in 2016-2018. In January 2016, it cut 100 jobs, or 7% of its workforce. [32] In November 2016, GoPro cut an additional 15% of its workforce after attempting to branch out beyond its core business of action cameras, as the entertainment division failed to reach profitability. [33] Additional layoffs followed in March 2017. [34] In January 2018, GoPro announced they were removing drones from their product lineup and reducing the workforce from 1,254 employees to fewer than 1,000. [35] In January 2018 Woodman announced that he was open to selling GoPro. [36] With the layoffs, GoPro went back to its earlier, flatter structure. "We decided to simplify everything and get back to the business that we knew and loved as a private company", Woodman said. [37]
In December 2016, a class action lawsuit against GoPro was announced. The complaint alleged that GoPro made false and misleading statements to investors and failed to disclose flaws in the company's drones, overstating customer demand, and GoPro's public statements were materially false and misleading. [38] [39]
With the many changes at and involving GoPro, including numerous job cuts and falling stock prices, Woodman was named in a 2016 Fox Business article as one of the year's worst CEOs. [40]
Woodman won the national Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in the retail and consumer products category in 2013. [41] In 2014, Woodman accepted an Emmy Award on behalf of GoPro for Technology and Engineering in the category of Inexpensive Small Rugged HD Camcorders. [42]
After a successful IPO, the couple donated 5.8 million shares of GoPro stock to the Jill + Nicholas Woodman Foundation, a fund they created at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a Donor-advised fund in 2014. [43] This donation allowed Nick Woodman to reduce his taxable income by approximately $450 million while avoiding capital gains taxes on the sale of the stock. [44] From 2014 to 2018, the value of the donated GoPro stock declined from $500 million to $36.1 million. Woodman has not announced when or how much of the original stock the foundation sold. Woodman was one of the biggest donors in the tech industry in 2014; however, it angered investors because the donation avoided the typical 180-day waiting period after an IPO. [45] [46] [47]
In March 2014, Woodman was honored for his philanthropic work with BUILD at their 5th annual gala in San Francisco. [48]
In 2015, the foundation donated $2.85 million to a child abuse prevention center in San Francisco and a community center in Montana for $4 million in 2019. [49] The total amount the foundation has disbursed for other projects has not been disclosed.
Woodman is married to Jill R. Scully. [50] They have three boys together. [11] [12] Woodman has owned a 180-foot yacht, a Gulfstream V jet and properties in Hawaii and Montana. [37] From 2012-2020 he owned an estate in Woodside, California. [51] From 2014, Woodman owned a 150 acre property in Bonny Doon, California. [52] The Bonny Doon property, which Woodman called "Boogie Ranch", went on the market in July 2020 for $20 million.
In May 2015, Woodman hosted an AMA on Reddit. [53]
Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American businessman, media proprietor and investor. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. He is the second wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of US$ 201 billion as of June 14, 2024, according to Forbes. He was the wealthiest person from 2017 to 2021, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes.
Michael Saul Dell is an American billionaire businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world's largest technology infrastructure companies.
Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of June 2023, Thiel had an estimated net worth of $9.7 billion and was ranked 213th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Sheldon Gary Adelson was an American businessman, investor, political donor, and philanthropist. He was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which owns the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited, which operated The Venetian Las Vegas and the Sands Expo and Convention Center before selling the properties in early 2022. He owned the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom, the Israeli weekly newspaper Makor Rishon, and the American daily newspaper the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Evan "Ev" Clark Williams is an American billionaire technology entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Twitter, and was its CEO from 2008 to 2010, and a member of its board from 2007 to 2019. He founded Blogger and Medium, two of the largest blogging internet platforms. In 2014, he co-founded the venture capital firm Obvious Ventures. As of February 2022, his net worth is estimated at US$2.1 billion.
Daniel Gilbert is an American billionaire, businessman, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and majority owner of Rocket Mortgage, founder of Rock Ventures, and owner of the National Basketball Association's Cleveland Cavaliers. Gilbert owns several sports franchises, including the American Hockey League's Cleveland Monsters, and the NBA G League's Cleveland Charge. He operates the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio, home to the Cavaliers and Monsters. As of January 2023, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$18.3 billion.
Nicholas J. Pritzker is an American real estate and venture entrepreneur in San Francisco, California. He served as the Chairman of the board and CEO of the Hyatt Development Corporation. He is a member of the wealthy Pritzker family, who owned chewing-tobacco giant Conwood before selling it to Reynolds American.
Eric Paul Lefkofsky is an American billionaire businessman. He is the founder of Tempus, and the co-founder of Groupon, Echo Global Logistics (ECHO), InnerWorkings (INWK), and Mediaocean. As of June 2024, he is also a co-managing partner of Chicago-based venture capital firm Lightbank. As of October 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$4.1 billion.
Thomas Tull is an American billionaire businessman, entrepreneur, and film producer. He is the former chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Legendary Entertainment. Tull is the founder of Tulco LLC, an investment holding company that uses artificial intelligence and other technologies to guide investing.
Dustin Aaron Moskovitz is an American billionaire internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook, Inc. with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found Asana with Justin Rosenstein. In March 2011, Forbes reported Moskovitz to be the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, on the basis of his then 2.34% share in Facebook. As of June 2024, his net worth is estimated at US$23 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Eduardo Luiz Saverin is a Brazilian billionaire entrepreneur and angel investor based in Singapore. Saverin is one of the co-founders of Facebook. In 2012, he owned 53 million Facebook shares, valued at approximately $2 billion at the time. He also invested in early-stage startups such as Qwiki and Jumio. With an estimated net worth of US$26.2 billion as of February 2024, he is the 65th richest person in the world, and the richest Brazilian.
Pavel Valeryevich Durov is a Russian-born Emirati entrepreneur who is known for founding the social networking site VK and the app Telegram Messenger. He is the younger brother of Nikolai Durov. As of 29 September 2022, his net worth is estimated at US$15.1 billion. In 2022, he was recognized as the richest expat in the United Arab Emirates, according to Forbes. In February 2023, Arabian Business named him the most powerful entrepreneur in Dubai.
Dennis J. "Chip" Wilson is an American-born Canadian businessman, investor, and philanthropist who has founded several retail apparel companies, most notably the yoga-inspired athletic apparel company Lululemon Athletica Inc. Wilson is widely regarded as the progenitor and a pioneering figure of the athleisure phenomenon, in which the trend has permeated mainstream North American society since its emergence in 2014.
GoPro, Inc. is an American technology company founded in 2002 by Nick Woodman. It manufactures action cameras and develops its own mobile apps and video-editing software. Founded as Woodman Labs, Inc, the company eventually focused on the connected sports genre, developing its line of action cameras and, later, video editing software. It is based in San Mateo, California.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) is a donor-advised community foundation serving the Silicon Valley region. It is the largest charitable foundation in Silicon Valley.
Lei Jun is a Chinese billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is known for founding the consumer electronics company Xiaomi. As of October 2022, Lei's net worth was estimated at either US$8.1 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the 203rd richest person in the world, or at $7.5 billion by Forbes, ranking him 265th worldwide.
Brian Acton is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. Acton is the executive chairman of the Signal Technology Foundation, which he co-founded with Moxie Marlinspike in 2018. As of January 10, 2022, Acton also serves as interim CEO of Signal Messenger LLC.
Dean Woodman was an American businessman, philanthropist, and co-founder of the investment bank Robertson Stephens.
Irwin Federman is an American businessman, philanthropist and General Partner of U.S. Venture Partners.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
