Born in Montreal, Canada, Kevin O’Leary made his fortune via SoftKey an educational software distributor. He and his SoftKey partners oversaw a rapid expansion and an aggressive strategy of buying out the competition. O’Leary and his business partners bought over The Learning Company and then took that as their company name. In 1999, Mattel bought O’Leary out for a staggering $3.8 billion.
O’Leary found fame as a Venture Capitalist in the Canadian version of Dragons Den. He is now on the US version which is renamed Shark Tank – and to be fair it is my new favourite show. We are only just getting it now on UK TV on Dave.
I remember O’Leary from the Canadian version and he was always straight talking and in love with money. But I think he is even more outrageous on the US version. I believe O’Leary would eat the UK Dragons for dinner.
He still sits on both chairs for the Canadian Dragons Den and Shark Tank as well as his show on CBC News Network.
O’Leary plays up to his Scrooge image or being the nasty one. It is highly entertaining and refreshingly he discounts the emotion of people’s backstories or ‘journeys’ as they call them on shows like American Idol and X-Factor. O’Leary is a wake-up call to the cold hard light of day that in business it really is dog eat dog.
O’Leary claims he is an ‘eco-preneur’ – an entrepreneur who is out to make money, but at the same time wants to invest in environmentally friendly enterprises.
He may not be a household name in the UK but if Shark Tank ever gets picked up by one of the terrestrial channels I will wager Kevin O’Leary will be public enemy number one. Think Simon Cowell, Nasty Nigel and J.R. Ewing all rolled into one. #Sharktank #kevino’leary #realityTV
