GoPro Founder Gives Old College Roommate $229 Million, Keeping A 10 Year Promise

Have you ever made an extravagant promise to a friend which, deep down, you both know you’ll never keep? Like when you say, if I win on this lottery ticket I’ll give you a few million? Well, it seems GoPro founder Nick Woodman is a man of his word and doesn’t back out on his promises, even if they were ten years ago.

CEO Woodman has doled out $229 million in company shares this week after honouring a promise he made to his roommate, Neil Dana, at college. Now, this wasn’t a contractual agreement, it was a verbal one in which he promised to give Dana 10% of proceeds from the sale of GoPro shares.

Dana was the first employee of GoPro and serves as the company’s director of music and speciality sales.

The lucky roommate was given over six million fully-vested stock options and then 6 months later he received another 270,000 restricted stock units.

Woodman isn’t feeling the pinch too much, since he’s the highest paid CEO in America. He even promised to reimburse GoPro himself should his friend cash in on the shares.

You have to respect a man who keeps his word like that but getting rich alone is boring and doing it with your old roommate from college sounds good to me.

If you’re wondering how GoPro make so much money, just check out this awesome video of a 9-month-old baby tearing up some waves, which was filmed with one…then you’ll understand.