Kevin O’Leary was born to a middle class family in 1954. The combination of Kevin’s mother’s family heritage as merchants and his father’s Irish charisma truly meant that O’Leary was born for business. Kevin learned most of his business intuition from his mother. She taught him key business and financial insights from an early age. These became Kevin’s core philosophies, and the pillars upon which he would one day build his empire.

 

After getting his MBA, he founded Special Event Television, an independent production company producing such original sports programming as The Original Six, Don Cherry's Grapevine and Bobby Orr and the Hockey Legends. In 1986, O'Leary founded SoftKey Software Products (later called The Learning Company), the first software company to apply the principles of consumer goods marketing to the software industry. SoftKey grew quickly as the price of personal computers declined, and millions of American families began to buy software for education and entertainment. In 2003, O'Leary co-founded Storage Now, a leading developer of climate controlled storage facilities.

 

Today, O'Leary leads the O'Leary Financial Group – a group of companies that includes O'Shares ETFs, O'Leary Publishing and a continually growing roster of other businesses. He is also the founder and Chief Sommelier of O'Leary Fine Wines, an award-winning wine label, as well as a member of Boston's 107-year old Hamilton Trust. In addition to Shark Tank, O'Leary co-hosted Discovery Channel's Project Earth television series that explored the financial implications of global climate change, and he is a regular contributor on CNBC. Kevin is an avid guitarist, photographer and author. He has written three bestselling books, including Cold Hard Truth on Men, Women and Money, and most recently, Cold Hard Truth on Family, Kids and Money.