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Canada Kevin O'Leary is a Canadian entrepreneur, investor, author, and television personality known for his shrewd business acumen and direct approach.
Founder of O'Leary Ventures, a private early-stage venture capital investment company. Founded to support startups and early-stage businesses, focusing on good ideas and big market opportunities.
Partnership between The 1916 Company and Kevin O'Leary's WonderCare platform to offer a new luxury watch service.
Kevin O'Leary, Group President at ITW, reflecting on 7 years of working with the company in a mini-series.
Kevin O'Leary was appointed brand ambassador for ONE Development, an UAE-born international real estate company.
Part of O'Leary's diverse portfolio of brand investments, including kitchen equipment brands.
Strategic investor in the Vancouver-based decentralized finance platform Defi Ventures, which later renamed itself WonderFi Technologies in reference to O'Leary's nickname, "Mr. Wonderful."
Took an ownership stake in the parent companies of FTX.com and FTX.US as part of his compensation for becoming a "spokesperson and ambassador" for FTX. He claimed he was paid $15 million for the role and lost $9.7 million in digital assets when the company went insolvent.
Featured investment on "Shark Tank," later acquired by Jamba Juice.
Investment made on "Shark Tank" with Mark Cuban, later acquired by Shutterfly.
Recent investment with Nirav Tolia of Nextdoor.
Member of ARHT Media's Board of Advisors.
Born Terrence Thomas Kevin O’Leary on July 9, 1954, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, O’Leary comes from a family with a business background; his mother was a small-business owner and investor, while his father was a salesman. He holds Canadian, Irish, and Emirati citizenship. O’Leary earned a Bachelor of Environmental Studies and psychology from the University of Waterloo in 1977 and an MBA in entrepreneurship from Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario in 1980. His early career included an internship at Nabisco as an assistant brand manager. Subsequently, he co-founded Special Event Television (SET), an independent television production company that produced sports programming, selling his share for $25,000.
In 1986, O’Leary co-founded SoftKey Software Products in Toronto. The company published and distributed CD-based personal computer software, particularly educational programs. SoftKey expanded through acquisitions, including WordStar and Spinnaker Software by 1993, and merged with The Learning Company (TLC) in 1995. In 1999, TLC was acquired by Mattel for $4.2 billion, making O’Leary a multimillionaire. However, the acquisition proved disastrous for Mattel, leading to significant losses and Mattel ultimately firing O’Leary. He later became a co-investor and corporate director at StorageNow Holdings in 2003, a Canadian storage facility developer, which was sold in 2007, yielding O’Leary a profit of over $4.5 million. He also co-founded O’Leary Funds Inc. in 2008, a mutual fund management firm that grew to $1.2 billion in assets under management before being sold in 2015 to Canoe Financial.
O’Leary gained widespread public recognition as a television personality, appearing as an investor on the Canadian reality series “Dragons’ Den” from 2006 to 2014, and its American counterpart, “Shark Tank,” since 2009. On these shows, he cultivated his “Mr. Wonderful” persona through his blunt and often abrasive assessments of business pitches, generally preferring deals that offer a percentage of future revenue over traditional equity stakes. His investments through “Shark Tank” are managed under his holding company, “Something Wonderful.” Beyond business and television, O’Leary campaigned for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2017, advocating for economic policies focused on lower taxes and reduced national debt, but withdrew before the election.
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