Nick woodman net worth 2015

Go ahead and guess: Who was the highest-paid executive at an American company last year?

Tim Cook? Larry Ellison? Microsoft’s Satya Nadella?

No, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News, it was 39-year-old Nick Woodman, the CEO of camera-maker GoPro (GPRO).

Shortly before the company went public last June, Woodman received a restricted stock grant valued at $284.5 million as of the end of the year.

The eye-popping payout ordinarily would have gotten the entrepreneur sent to Wall Street’s penalty box, especially since the company’s shares have plunged nearly 30 percent this year. Wall Street analysts, though, are willing to give Woodman the benefit of the doubt because they believe better times lie ahead for his San Mateo, Calif.-based company — even though it slashed its earnings outlook, battled rumors of activist investors getting involved and announced the unexpected departure of its Chief Operating Officer Nina Richardson.

Related: 10 Biggest Tech Flops of the Century​

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, GoPro noted that Woodman “is critical to the strategic direction and overall management of our company as well as our research and development process.”

Many on Wall Street are betting that Woodman’s strategy to create a media ecosystem featuring user-generated videos shot with GoPro cameras will pay off. As it explained in its IPO prospectus, the company hopes to “develop new revenue opportunities by increasing production of GoPro originally produced content while simultaneously increasing the aggregation and redistribution of our customers.”

GoPro has signed content partnerships with snow boarder Shaun White, surfer Kelly Slater and Microsoft’s Xbox division. It even sells “Fetch,” a camera mount that enables users to film from the perspective of their dogs. According to Outside magazine, GoPro has 67 percent of the camcorder market, “a share so commanding that its name

In the United States, who is the highest paid CEO? Nick Woodman’s net worth just shot up even further since he just received the number one spot on the Bloomberg Pay Index. But why does his work related to GoPro video cameras pay so much?

In a related report by the Inquisitr , Jessica Simpson’s net worth is not as high as you might think considering how the headlines have been talking about the growth of her billion dollar company.

At only 39-years-old, Nick Woodman built his business empire based upon an idea for an HD personal camera on a surfing trip. About 11 years later, the market for the GoPro cameras had grown to the point that Woodman received a salary of $800,000 and a $1 million bonus in 2013. The United State’s highest paid CEO even managed to rack up $49,591 in business car expenses put on the company tab.

So how did he become the highest paid CEO? Nick Woodman jumped up on the Bloomberg Pay Index since he was granted 4.5 million restricted stock units that were valued at $284.5 million at the end of 2014. But since the GoPro company has yet to file its proxy statement reports for 2014, it is possible Woodman made even more money than previous years based upon additional compensation, including salary and perks like the aforementioned car charges.

Currently, Nick Woodman’s net worth is estimated to be hovering around $2.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Forbes agrees with that 2015 assessment, noting that the GoPro CEO is number 276 in the richest billionaires in the United States, and number 782 in the world based upon the 2015 Forbes lists. But Woodman’s net worth fluctuates greatly based upon the GoPro stock price.

“Since it went public in June 2014, there has been no more volatile technology stock than that of Nick Woodman’s GoPro. The camera maker’s shares have fluctuated in value tremendously, at one point tripling its IPO price of $24. Most recently the stock dropped more than 13% in one day foll

Nick Woodman keeps his promises.

The GoPro founder and CEO returned 4.7 million shares worth $229 million as part of an agreement he made with his college roommate 10 years ago, according to Bloomberg.

Neil Dana, who attended the University of California at San Diego with Woodman, was GoPro's first employee. He currently serves as the company's director of music and specialty sales.

When GoPro was in its early days, Woodman promised to give Dana 10% of any money he made from selling GoPro shares. Woodman founded GoPro in 2004, initially just making wrist straps for small cameras and then eventually branching out into building the hardware itself. 

In 2011, GoPro issued Dana 6 million fully vested options in addition to 270,000 restricted stock units, Bloomberg reports. Woodman agreed that he would reimburse GoPro when those options were exercised.

Dana spent $3.6 million to exercise his options this week. Woodman's net worth will fall to $2.3 billion after he returns the $229 million worth of shares to GoPro.

GoPro went public on June 26, 2014. According to documents filed with the SEC, Woodman's mom, dad, and two sisters all became millionaires, and Woodman became a billionaire.

Woodman was the highest-paid CEO in the US last year, with compensation of 4.5 million restricted stock units valued at $284.5 million.

American businessman, founder and CEO of GoPro

Nicholas D. Woodman (born June 24, 1975) is an American businessman, and the founder and CEO of GoPro.

Early life and education

Woodman is the son of Concepcion (née Socarras) and Dean Woodman. His father was born into a Quaker family and co-founded the investment bank Robertson Stephens; and his mother is of Hispanic descent and re-married Irwin Federman, General Partner of U.S. Venture Partners in 1992. Woodman grew up in Menlo Park, California and Atherton, California, attending the Menlo School, 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 in 1997.

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 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&#