Kevin O'Leary Keynote Speaker

Kevin O’Leary was born on July 9, 1954. As the son of a United Nations ILO official, he had the opportunity to live and be educated in Cambodia, Cyprus, Tunisia, Ethiopia, France, and Switzerland.

Kevin attended the University of Waterloo, where he received an honors bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and psychology in 1977. He later earned his MBA from the Ivey Business School in 1980. After briefly working as an assistant product manager at Nabisco Brands, he left to pursue a career in television production and became a founding partner in Special Event Television, an independent production company that produced original sports programming such as The Original Six, Don Cherry’s Grapevine, and Bobby Orr and the Hockey Legends.

In 1986, Kevin co-founded SoftKey Software, one of the first companies to apply consumer goods marketing principles to the software industry. As personal computers became more affordable, SoftKey grew rapidly, providing educational and entertainment software to millions of North American households.

In January 1994, SoftKey became a catalyst for consolidation in the software industry, raising over $1 billion through a series of debt and equity financings and completing a landmark three-way merger with Spinnaker Software and WordStar International. Following the merger, the company moved its headquarters to Boston, Massachusetts. Between 1995 and 1998, SoftKey acquired several major competitors, including Compton’s New Media, The Learning Company, Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC), Creative Wonders, Mindscape, and Broderbund. These acquisitions positioned SoftKey as a global leader in educational, reference, and home productivity software, with annual sales exceeding $800 million, approximately 2,000 employees, and operations in 15 countries.

In 1996, SoftKey was renamed The Learning Company. In May 1999, Mattel acquired The Learning Company for $4.2 billion.

In 2003, Kevin became a co-investor and director of StorageNow, a developer of climate-controlled storage facilities. Through a series of development projects and acquisitions, the company expanded across eleven cities, serving clients such as Merck and Pfizer, before being acquired by InStorage REIT in March 2007 for $110 million.

In July 2007, Kevin became a founding SPAC investor and director of Stream Global Services Inc., focused on the growing outsourcing business services market.

Kevin O’Leary is the Chairman of O’Shares ETF Investments and Beanstox, an automated, internet-based investment advisory service. He also holds investments in more than 30 private venture companies across a wide range of sectors. He is a member of Boston’s 120-year-old Hamilton Trust, the oldest investment club in the United States.

He is a contributor to CNBC, ABC News, and Good Morning America, and an entrepreneur, investor, and co-host of the Discovery Channel’s Project Earth series, which explores innovative approaches to addressing climate change through large-scale geo-engineering projects. He is also an investor and host on ABC’s four-time Emmy Award–winning venture capital reality programs Shark Tank and Beyond the Tank, produced by MGM, Sony, and ABC.

Kevin O’Leary is an active photographer, watch collector, guitarist, and author of three #1 bestselling books: Cold Hard Truth, Men, Women and Money, and Family, Kids and Money.