Shark Tank star and entrepreneur Kevin O'Leary is looking toward companies run by women as his best bets for the future. The former software titan says women have run his most profitable ventures as of late, and he expects that to continue.
O'Leary is arguably the star of ABC's Shark Tank reality show. Although he sits beside a cast of five other successful and articulate business moguls – Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec and Daymond John – he remains in the center chair in every episode.
The others are rotated in and out as budding entrepreneurs present their pitches on why he and his colleagues should invest in their company's products. This season, O'Leary even had a new fellow entrepreneur to compete with in Shark Tank's premiere episode: special guest star actor-turned-tech investor Ashton Kutcher.
O'Leary is sarcastically known as "Mr.Wonderful" on the show, due to his harsh critique and bloodsucking offers, which often require a royalty in perpetuity on the invention up for grabs. While O'Leary appears to be an equal opportunity offender, however, it seems he has a soft spot for women as his business partners.
O'Leary made his fortune as a software mogul, selling his SoftKey company for hundreds of millions of dollars. His biggest Shark Tank success was also a technology play of sorts, smartphone photo app GrooveBook, which was then quickly purchased by Shutterfly for $14.5 million.
The mogul isn't just looking for tech investments on the show. Instead, he is now focusing on one other important element of a company—the gender of its founder.
"One hundred percent of my returns the last six years have come from companies run by women," he claims. "There's an old adage that says, 'if you want to get something done, give it to a busy mother.' "
O'Leary offers no specific reason why females seem to generate greater profits and success, but the why doesn't seem to matter to him at all.
"I don't care why," he says. "I care about the actual financial results. So this year on Shark Tank, I'm investing in a lot of women."
