"Almost 90%" - Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary reveals most of his returns are from women-led companies

Kevin O'Leary, the Shark Tank investor, revealed a new insight from the venture capital world. He challenged the traditional assumptions about a startup's success.

During his conference in Miami with all his companies, Kevin shared how, based on seven years of tracking his portfolio companies, businesses run by women have consistently delivered the highest returns.

The Shark Tank investor said that this was not a result of some academic study but real-time numbers from businesses that operate in the American and Canadian markets.

The data comes from reviews of sales and free cash flow reports, which are important metrics in the absence of stock prices for private companies.

What Kevin found out was that the male-led companies projected a growth rate of 30%, and they hit their targets 65% of the time. On the other hand, female-led companies had set a modest growth rate of 15% annually but met their target 95% of the time.

Explaining, he said,

"In the venture space, you may find this interesting. If I look at my returns, which I track, year after year, almost 90% of my returns come from companies run by women, particularly all the Shark Tank deals..."

Adding, he said,

"And the companies run by men over a one-year period, the average growth rate that was projected by the CEOs was just over 30%, which is very aggressive, and they hit those targets 65% of the time, which I thought was fantastic.

He continued,

Then, we looked at companies run by women over the same seven years. Their average growth rate was just over 15%. Almost half. So I thought, okay, so what? But they hit their targets 95% of the time."

---

Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary reveals how companies run by women are delivering better returns

Digging deeper into the personal impact of the whole thing, the Shark Tank investor discovered an important link between realistic goal setting and stability in organisations. Companies run by women that met their goals saw no employee turnover.

That stability is what turns into a better long-term business performance. He said that with consistent teams in place and minimal disruptions from staff attrition, these companies were able to focus on scaling steadily and managing the costs effectively. The results were superior returns.

To take this data and learnings from the same, and apply it more broadly to all the companies that were in his portfolio, Kevin held a conference and then changed the targets.

Here is what he said he found from the same.

"When I saw this data, I held a conference down here in Miami with all my companies, and I said, 'Guys, look at this data, it's real data. Let's drop our growth targets where you get these, where you can hit your numbers, 90% of the time.' And son of gun, within 24 months, free cash went up 20%," Kevin expressed.

---

Shark Tank season 16 episodes release weekly on ABC at 8 PM Eastern Time on Fridays. They are later available to watch on Hulu.