a third of her weekly paycheque in large-cap, dividend-paying stocks and interest-bearing bonds, ultimately achieving high returns in her investment portfolio. She kept her investment portfolio secret, so O'Leary only discovered his mother's skill as an investor after her death, when her will was executed. Many of his investment lessons came from his mother, including the admonition to save one-third of his money. O'Leary had aspired to become a photographer, but on the advice of his stepfather, attended university, where he continued to develop his interest in business and investing. He received an honours bachelor's degree in environmental studies and psychology from the University of Waterloo in 1977 and an MBA in entrepreneurship from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario in 1980. Business career In 1978, between the first and second years of his MBA program, O'Leary was selected for an internship at Nabisco in Downtown Toronto and then worked as an assistant brand manager for Nabisco's cat food brand. O'Leary credits his later success at The Learning Company to the skills he developed in marketing during his days at Nabisco. After leaving Nabisco, O'Leary began a brief career as a television producer. With two of his former MBA classmates, Scott Mackenzie and Dave Toms (both of whom had assisted on O'Leary's MBA documentary), O'Leary co-founded Special Event Television (SET). SET was an independent television production company that produced original sports programming such as The Original Six, Don Cherry's Grapevine, and Bobby Orr and the Hockey Legends. The company achieved limited success with minor television shows, soccer films, sports documentaries, and short in-between-period commercials for local professional hockey games. One of his partners later bought out his share of the venture for $25,000. Softkey After selling his SET share, O'Leary started Softkey in a Toronto basement in 1986, along with business partners John Freeman and Gary Babcock. The company was a publisher and distributor of CD based personal computer software for Windows and Macintosh computers. A major financial backer who had committed $250,000 in development capital to the company backed out the day before signing the documents and delivering his cheque, leaving O'Leary looking for funding to support the fledgling business. He used the proceeds from selling his SET share and convinced his mother to lend him $10,000 in seed capital to establish SoftKey Software Products. The software and personal-computer industries were proliferating in the early