Nick Woodman

 ( 1975 Births ) 

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, 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. 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 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 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. 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 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.

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.