Nicholas D. Woodman also popularly known as Nick Woodman is a philanthropist as well as a successful businessman from America. He is the CEO as well as the founder of the popular camera manufacturing company GoPro. He was born on 24th June 1975 and currently resides in Woodside, California in the USA. He is an American by birth. His parents are Dean Woodman and Concepcion. His father is the co-founder of Robertson Stephens which is an investment bank.
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Woodman graduated from the Menlo School in 1993 situated in California. In 1997, Nick received his baccalaureate in the field of visual arts from University of California situated in San Diego, California. He is an avid fan of surfing. His initial ventures in two startups failed to take flight and with the help of monetary support in the form of investment from his banker father, started the GoPro Company.
The initial inspiration and idea behind the GoPro camera came to Nick during one of his leisure trips to Australia where he found that surfers faced lots of problems to capture themselves in action using the available cameras of that time. Also dedicated cameras used for filming such high speed movement and in adverse environments such as in the sea were not affordable. Thus Nick wanted to manufacture an affordable camera to be used specifically for such purpose. Thus Nick and his wife and business partner Jill R Scully started collecting money to fulfill Nick’s dream of a camera with a strap which can be attached with the user’s body. This together with loans from Nick’s parents led to the first generation GoPro cameras which were essentially of point and shoot variety with 35mm aperture.
Nick’s first major sales breakthrough was in 2004 as a company from Japan ordered 100 numbers of the cameras. Since then the franchise of GoPro has never looked back with sales getting more and more from 2004 to 2012 with the initial investment giving more than double the returns. In 2014, Woodman was getting a salary of approximately 235 million US Dollars making him the highest earning executive in the USA.
Another major highpoint was when NHL developed collaboration with GoPro in 2015, for their matches. However Nick has also been mired in controversy and has often been labeled as eccentric due to his decisions from 2015 to 2016 so much so that he has been named the worst CEO of 2016. He started a philanthropic organization with his wife known as the Jill+Nicholas Woodman Foundation in 2014 which has made huge donations to tech companies based in Silicon Valley in California, USA.
The present generations of GoPro cameras are much advanced than the first one. They have a protective casing for the camera, supportingWi-Fi connectivity and micro SD cards as well as remote shooting modes. Nicholas is married to Jill R Scully and the couple has three children from their marriage. Woodman’s net worth is estimated to be around 947 million US dollars. His twitter handle is @GoPro. Nick presently has a house in Woodside, California where he lives with his family.
Last Modified: Apr 6, 2020
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