Risk & Return – The Infinite Balance: Kevin O’Leary:s take on being an entrepreneur

Having created 3 highly successful start-up companies in his career, Kevin is well experienced to provide budding entrepreneurs a realistic, hands-on view of what it’s like to risk everything when you believe in an idea.  Kevin is intimately familiar with risking everything for the sake of the big pay-off as a panelist of 2 venture capital shows, Dragons’ Den on CBC and Shark Tank on ABC. He will discuss the attributes he considers necessary to succeed in an entrepreneurial start up.

O‘Leary will share some interesting anecdotes from the production of several television productions he is involved in. You will see how some projects can go completely wrong in spite of years of time and financial investments, but with hope and innovation can be resurrected and reinvented to reap profits that seemed otherwise lost.

Through Kevin’s many sources of media, entertainment, and experience developing start-up businesses he is well-served to teach new entrepreneurs by demonstrating real life examples of entrepreneurs/inventors who succeeded by delicately balancing risk and return and those who failed by risking everything in search of great returns.

Kevin O’Leary

Said by some to be opinionated, ruthless, hungers for big deals and loves to take control—yet he made his millions helping children learn how to read.

Kevin O’Leary’s success story starts where most entrepreneurs begin: with a big idea and zero cash. From his basement, he launched SoftKey Software Products. As sales took off, Kevin moved to headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts and went on an industry consolidating acquisition binge.

From 1995 to 1999 he bought out almost every one of his software competitors, including Mindscape, Broderbund and the Learning Company in the industry’s first vicious public hostile battle. Shareholders loved his take-no-prisoners, cost cutting style and fueled him with billions to do his deals.

In 1999 Kevin sold his company to the Mattel Toy Company for a staggering 3.7 billion dollars, one of the largest deals ever done in the consumer software industry. To keep his money working hard, he took control of his wealth from his lackluster money managers and founded his own mutual fund company, O’Leary Funds. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors who share his “get paid while you wait” yield oriented, value investing philosophy. He shares his tips and tribulations with a national television audience and turns The Street upside down in the process.

As a self-proclaimed “Eco-preneur,” Kevin looks hardest for investments that make money – and are environmentally friendly. When he’s not squeezing the market from his office in West Palm Beach, he travels the world looking for new opportunities to deploy his capital. He is a founding investor and director of Stream Global, an international business outsourcing company. He is on the investment committee of Boston’s prestigious 200-year-old Hamilton Trust, and is the chairman of O’Leary Funds. He also serves on the executive board of The Richard Ivey School of Business.

Kevin escapes on weekends with his family to his luxurious cottage that spreads over prime Canadian wilderness on the shore of an ancient glacial lake.