Name: Kevin O'Leary: The TRUTH About Shark Tank
Uploaded: 2025-12-26T14:30:55.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Kevin O'Leary: The TRUTH About Shark Tank' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Kevin O'Leary: The TRUTH About Shark Tank' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-26. Transcript available.

So you were raised by your stepfather primarily?
Yeah, he was very pragmatic with me.
And your parents split up after you'd moved or before?
No, my parents, my original father, they got divorced and then he died actually
when he was 37.
When did he die? When you moved or around the time?
We, he had, they were divorced already. My mother was now, you know, starting
dating, I guess, my stepfather.
But then he passed away, my original father, and then they moved to finish off
George's PhD.
That's what happened.
And did you, you didn't get a chance to say goodbye or?
I did. I knew, you know, I spent weekends with him, but one day he was just
gone. It was tough.
My brother's two years old, so it was really hard on him.
Yeah. That was difficult. But, you know, when I started moving every two years,
I thought everybody lived that way.
But it's not true. No.
But it ended up being a huge advantage for me because I've been to every
culture in the world.
Yeah. So, you know, Iceland and Norway and France and Switzerland and Germany
and Japan and Ethiopia, all of those places.
Yeah. And another thing is, well, a funny thing, correct me if this is wrong,
but your stepfather at the end of high school asked you what you wanted to do.
And you said, I want to take photographs of hot chicks.
He said, you're not good enough.
That's so us, by the way.
That's awesome.
Wait, that is the most awesome answer I've ever heard.
And he said, look, you're not good enough.
You'll starve to death.
Why don't you just take a couple of years off and go get a business degree?
Then you can figure out what to do.
He was right.
But I went right back into photography.
I founded a company called Special Event Television.
We did all the hockey programming on Saturday nights for the original six teams.
And you developed the technology for, like, digital graphics.
Yeah, we did that.
Yeah.
That turned into a learning company.
There was a bunch of things that happened in that journey, and you just don't
know what's
going to happen when you start a company.
But we did Dawn Cherry's Grapevine.
The original six was another format we owned.
I didn't know what a television format was, but I owned it.
And so somebody came along and said, I want to buy it.
That was the first exit we had.
And we took that money, started the learning company, and the rest is history.
Yeah.
When-- another surprising thing about you is that you-- you know, I'm old pinko
glasses
New York Jew over here.
I would assume, like-- I would never have assumed that you'd be an
environmentalist,
that you'd studied environmental studies.
You made a documentary.
Yeah.
And you happen to be one to this day, you think?
I was-- one of the first cohorts was Sally Lerner and Reg Mikalachki were the
two of them.
They founded it in the architecture department, and-- but what Sally told me,
which I'll never
forget, she said, you know, Kevin, you're-- you should pursue entrepreneurship.
You should go start a business, because, you know, this-- you don't look to me
like a guy
who's ever going to keep a job.
Yeah.
You just-- you know, you just don't know how to work for anybody.
And it's-- it could be bad, it could be good, but-- but she was one of the ones
that really
edged me on, and I'll never forget that.
It was-- it was-- because she was right.
I mean, in the end, I never was able to hold down a job for anybody.
I never will.
Tell us about the cat food.
Yeah, I-- that was the summer.
This is a good story, guys.
I had to have a summer job, and I worked for a guy, but that ended up being a
very important
lesson, because he took me to show how cat food was made, and it's just two
engines.
It's Sea of Japan tuna, the belly, that's for the fish protein, and the other
is chicken
faces and beef faces and all the parts that we don't eat of a cow, and they get
sort of melted
into a mush with papaya juice, and then squeezed out, and that paste is the
protein that is--
It's Chicken McNuggets at McDonald's.
Yeah, yeah.
These are for cats, but-- so-- but think about the idea.
It's-- it's either-- it's either Sea of Japan tuna on this side, or the chicken
faces on the
right.
Sounds nicer, the tuna.
Yeah.
Fifteen years later, I'm sitting with my partner, the learning company, we're
buying all these software
companies with their developers, making educational software, and the only two
things we're
doing is math and reading scores.
We're doing hundreds of millions of dollars of sales advancing math and reading
scores.
Yes.
And I said to Mike, "Let me tell you this story about cat food."
And I said, "Why don't we fire all the developers that we don't need and just
have one chicken
face team and one Sea of Japan tuna team?"
Uh-huh.
The Sea of Japan tuna does the reading software.
The other guys do the math.
Yeah.
And then all we do is take the titles, because when you make cat food, you add
bacon bits,
a little egg bits, or, you know, and you call it, you know, souffle or whatever.
But it's just the same pace.
We did the same thing.
We licensed characters from Disney and characters from-
Mattel, right?
Yeah, Big Bird.
We had all these titles, and we pay a royalty on it, and our cost of
development dropped by
30 percent.
But didn't you try to rebrand the cat food, and then they said, "Would you eat
it?"
Yeah.
That's what I was asking today.
I did have to eat it in front of the sales force, but apparently that's sort of
like
a hazing thing they did at that company.
Really?
They made the young guy eat the food, and I knew how it was made, so it really
made me
sick.
Yeah, yeah.
And then you were like, "I'm not going to have a boss ever again."
Yeah.
And it's kind of for good reason.
Well, it was an important lesson.
I think you learn these things in life, and they come back, and they're very
good for
you later.
That's the whole idea.
But that was an important lesson, the two engines of protein, because that
changed the
outcome of The Learning Company in a big way.
I want to talk about your turn into entertainment.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm a comedian.
I've gone on the road.
I've watched thousands of hours of "Shark Tank."
It's just the best show, and you are just a fucking hit.
You know that.
Well, it's been on for 17 years.
We're shooting our 18th season.
I actually have a theory about why that happens.
The real stars, and the reason people keep watching it, is every time someone
walks through
those doors, they've never seen that product or service before.
They can't believe someone else thought of it instead of them.
It's why didn't I think of that?
Because half of these things turn into huge successes, and the other half go to
zero.
But every once in a while you get some crazy idea that ends up being fucking
huge.
Yeah, yeah.
And we've seen it happen.
You missed on that ring door thing, you guys.
The ring was huge.
Cat DNA was huge.
What's that?
Wicked good cupcakes.
It was called Base Paws.
It was a monster hit.
Cat DNA?
Cat DNA.
You stick a Q-tip up the cat's ass, you send it in, and it tells you what to
feed it to
extend its life by 30%.
That's a dog.
That's not a gem.
What's your thing?
A dog or a gem?
No.
A dog or a business, dog or a business gem?
Well, I'd say, look, it's a howling dog from hell.
That sounds like the dumbest idea for anything.
But it's not.
That pisses me off that that's successful.
Yeah, but you know, I've seen so many pitches now, I kind of have an idea what's
going to
work and what isn't.
I like when you're mean to kids.
I don't like kids.
Yeah, yeah.
When they're like, I'm three years old and I have a business.
You're an idiot.
Get off the screen.
The way I get out of that problem is I save the parents.
What?
I'll invest in the three-year-old if you take him out of school for the rest of
his life.
Yeah.
So that he can work for me full time.
Yeah, he shouldn't be going to school.
I don't know why anybody would invest in a kid in high school.
It's a gimmick.
You've got to wait until they graduate.
Yeah.
And I would do it.
I think it's dumb.
But you know, it's TV and so it happens.
Yeah, you crush it on that.
How much of Mr. Wonderful is a character?
Because I'm meeting you right now, you seem like you're just a, what, like,
calm,
friendly, well-adjusted, zenned out, dude.
Well, you're telling a baby that he should, he'll never work again.
You can't, you can't.
You really, you turn it on.
No, no.
You can't fake it for 17 years.
You can't do that.
That's who I am when it comes to investing.
I scrutinize deals.
I am not acting.
I'm not faking it.
That's, that's who I am.
And you can ask the people I work with, my team.
That's how I am.
Yeah.
And so, you know, it's sort of like, it's, for me, Shark Tank, I don't see any
cameras on
Shark Tank, nor does anybody else.
Right.
We've been doing it for so long.
I mean, I've, you know, it's just, bring it on.
Let's have a look at it.
But if it's dog shit, I'm going to say it's dog shit.
Yeah.
You know, you, you tell the truth.
That's, that's what you're known for.
I think telling the truth is extremely helpful in the case of business, because
you don't
want them to waste the money.
You want them to actually say, maybe it is dog shit.
If everybody won't invest.
I find it very disingenuous when Barbara or Lori say, well.
That pisses me off too.
I, oh, you're so nice.
And I, I think you're wonderful.
You should just go do what you do.
You don't need any of us.
Shut up.
What they're saying is your product's a piece of shit.
Yeah.
And I would never invest in it.
I just say your product's a piece of shit.
No, they're, they're setting them up.
They're going to lose them money.
And I'm, by like gaslighting them.
Yeah.
You know, Barbara's on this side, Lori's here and say, what are you doing?
You're lying through your teeth to these people.
Yeah.
You're giving them such bad advice to tell them to keep going on this dog shit
crap they
have.
Like why?
Why don't you just call it what it is?
Dog shit crap.
Yeah.
Do them a favor.
Tell them the truth.
Because in reality, those people are going to think that it's not dog shit crap.
And it's going to cost them time and money.
It's so bad I can smell the odor of dog shit off the product.
Yeah.
Just from, I'm in the room 10 feet away saying, it's horrible.
Shoot it.
It's like it's, it's be, they're being kind, but they're not being kind.
In fact, you're being kind.
Yes.
By telling that kid to kill himself.
Thank you.
Finally, somebody realized it.
Yeah.
I mean, I do.
Look at the, look at the heat I take from everybody.
Oh, you're the mean shark.
You're the bad shark.
No, I'm not.
I'm just telling you.
No, you're the star of the show.
You're the star of the show.
You sit in the middle.
But the point is, it's a piece of crap.
Yeah.
It is.