Kevin O'Leary Profile - Shark Tank

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

Shark Tank - Kevin O'Leary: The nasty billionaire

I'm slowly but surely becoming addicted to the US version of Dragons Den, Shark Tank. It is far more entertaining than the UK version, and in the form of Canadian Dragons Den star Kevin O'Leary the show has a Dragon or Shark who is brutal.

To be fair to O'Leary, a lot of the time he is simply telling the truth and he certainly removes himself from the emotion sometimes involved in the story or the person. He doesn't buy all these X-Factor 'journeys'. All he wants to do is make money.

Watch some of his best or worst bits here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXyQJKK88Qo

Shark Tank - US version of Dragons' Den - Voyager Air Guitar

I watched this by accident last night on Dave! It is called Shark Tank – which is basically the US version of Dragons’ Den (which is originally from Japan).

Entrepreneurs go into the Shark Tank and pitch their ideas to the ‘Sharks’. I found it quite amusing, and the US show which was made by Mark Burnett (the creator of The Apprentice) also had 2 Dragons from the Canadian version of the hit show.

The episode I saw had a brilliant invention of a folding down guitar which didn’t have to be retuned. It was called the Voyage Air Guitar. It looked a fab product, but the Sharks wanted 51% of the business which the founder of the company, Jeff Cohen, wouldn’t part with.

It seemed a shame as the two Sharks involved had might. Canadian Shark Kevin O’Leary is a licensing guru who sold his last business for around $4 billion, and the other was one of the main men behind QVC the shopping channel.

I do hope the owner of Voyage Air Guitars doesn’t regret not selling his stake.