Nicholas D. Woodman (born June 24, 1975) is an American businessman, and the founder and CEO of
GoPro
GoPro, Inc. (marketed as GoPro and sometimes stylized as GoPRO) 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 La ...
.
Early life and education
Woodman is the son of Concepcion (née Socarras) and
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
family and co-founded the investment bank
Robertson Stephens
Robertson Stephens is a wealth management firm serving high net worth individuals and family offices. The firm is registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment advisor.
Robertson Stephens was founded as ...
; and his mother is of
Hispanic
The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad.
The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...
descent and re-married
Irwin Federman
Irwin Federman (born 1936) is an American businessman, philanthropist and General Partner of U.S. Venture Partners.
Biography
Federman was born to a Jewish family in 1936 and graduated with a B.S. in Economics from Brooklyn College.
, General Partner of
U.S. Venture Partners
U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) is a venture capital investment firm specializing in early-stage ventures in enterprise software, cybersecurity, consumer, e-commerce, healthcare, and IT-enabled healthcare services. The venture capital partnership ...
in 1992. Woodman grew up in
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; ...
and
Atherton, California
Atherton () is an List of municipalities in California, incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 7,188 as of 2020.
Atherton is known for its wealth; in 1990 and 2019, Athe ...
, attending the
Menlo School
Menlo School, also referred to as Menlo, is a private college preparatory school in Atherton, California, United States, across the street from Menlo Park. Menlo comprises a middle school, grades 6–8, with approximately 230 students, an ...
, where he graduated in 1993. He earned a bachelor's degree in visual arts and a minor in creative writing from the
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...
Jewish Business News
''Jewish Business News'' is an online newspaper published in English, which primarily covers stories relating to businesses owned, or managed, by Jewish business people around the world, as is implied by the paper’s nameplate. The newspaper lau ...
'', March 7, 2013
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. Woodman received a $235,000 investment from his father, an investment banker in Silicon Valley, and used his parents' connections in venture capital to launch GoPro.
Career
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. Seeing that amateur photographers like him, who wanted to capture high quality action
photos
A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now created ...
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. His solution was to develop a belt that would attach the camera to the body. To finance the business, Woodman borrowed $200,000 from his father, who still owned a 6.4% stake in May 2014. Nick also borrowed $35,000 and a sewing machine from his mother, which he used to sew camera straps while experimenting with early designs. 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). 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.
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. Woodman would go about selling his products while using his 1971 Volkswagen Bus that he named The Buscuit as his mobile home. The product has since evolved into a compact digital camera that supports
WiFi
Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...
, can be remotely controlled, has waterproof housing and records to a
microSD
Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices.
The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanDis ...
card.
In 2004, Woodman made his first big sale when a Japanese company ordered 100 cameras at a sports show. Thereafter, sales doubled every year, and in 2012, GoPro sold 2.3 million cameras. In 2005, Woodman appeared on QVC to sell his GoPro Hero. 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
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Hon Hai Technology Group in China and Taiwan and Foxconn internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer established in 1974 with headquarters in Tucheng, New T ...
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.Business Insider: "Meet The World's Newest Billionaire, A 36-Year-Old 'Surfer Dude' Named Nicholas Woodman" by Alyson Shontell December 23, 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.
In 2015, GoPro formed a partnership with the NHL in which the NHL would use GoPro products to improve the viewing experience for fans. Woodman was invited to speak at various tech conferences, and in October 2015, Woodman was a guest on ''
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
''The Late Show with Stephen Colbert'' is an American late-night news and liberal political satire talk show hosted by Stephen Colbert, which premiered on September 8, 2015. Produced by Spartina Productions and CBS Studios, it is the second it ...
'' and wore a GoPro camera for the entirety of the interview. Woodman appeared as a shark investor in the sixth season of the show ''
Shark Tank
''Shark Tank'' is an American business reality television series that premiered on August 9, 2009, on ABC.Hibberd, James (May 10, 201'Dancing,' 'Bachelor,' and a bigger 'Shark Tank' returning to ABCInsider TV. Retrieved June 24, 2012 The show i ...
''. Woodman had invested $125,000 as of November 2015 on ''Shark Tank'' on two investments.
GoPro made a series of job cuts in 2016-2018. In January 2016, it cut 100 jobs, or 7% of its workforce. 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. Additional layoffs followed in March 2017. 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. In January 2018 Woodman announced that he was open to selling GoPro.
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.
In December 2016, a
class action lawsuit
A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action ...
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.
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.
Awards
Woodman won the national Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in the retail and consumer products category in 2013. In 2014, Woodman accepted an Emmy Award on behalf of GoPro for Technology and Engineering in the category of Inexpensive Small Rugged HD Camcorders.
Philanthropy
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
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.
History
Early history: 2006–2011
Silicon Valley Community Fo ...
, a
Donor-advised fund
In the United States, a donor-advised fund (commonly called a DAF) is a charitable giving vehicle administered by a public charity created to manage charitable donations on behalf of organizations, families, or individuals. To participate in a don ...
in 2014. 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. 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.
In March 2014, Woodman was honored for his philanthropic work with BUILD at their 5th annual gala in San Francisco.
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. The total amount the foundation has disbursed for other projects has not been disclosed.
Personal life
Woodman is married to Jill R. Scully. They have three boys together. Woodman has owned a 180-foot yacht, a
Gulfstream V
The Gulfstream V (Model GV, pronounced "G-five") is a long-range, large business jet aircraft produced by Gulfstream Aerospace, derived from the previous Gulfstream IV. It flies up to , up to and has a range. It typically accommodates four cr ...
jet and properties in Hawaii and Montana. From 2012-2020 he owned an estate in
Woodside, California
Woodside is a small incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. Woodside is among the wealthiest communities in the United States, home to many technology billionaires and investment manager ...
. From 2014, Woodman owned a 150 acre property in
Bonny Doon, California
Bonny Doon is a census-designated place in Santa Cruz County, California. It is situated northwest of the Santa Cruz, California, city of Santa Cruz, considered part of the South Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), southern San Francisco Bay Area or n ...
. 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.