In 2021, Justin Baer launched his business Collars & Co., quickly seeing a surge in sales after a TikTok video of him promoting it went viral. The shirts themselves have a unique twist, allowing for a much more comfortable feel compared to the traditional dress shirt style.
The future entrepreneur was lucky to have Mark Cuban and Peter Jones pony up the dough to take the business to another level. For Cuban, one of the reasons for his investment was that he saw himself in Baer. While most people would think that someone as successful as Cuban seeing himself in a young businessman is a positive thing, that wasn’t the case. It was the lessons of Cuban’s past missteps that helped him identify what Baer was doing wrong in asking for his investment. “He reminded me of me, I’m not going to lie,” the Dallas Mavericks owner told CNBC. “When you’re young, you don’t know what you don’t know. I spoke a lot more than listened.
That’s apparently why Cuban sweetened the deal, adding the $700,000 line of credit on top of the base investment amount. After the episode, Baer told MR that the sharks really are the right people to do business with. “Mark and Peter were awesome,” he said. “They are in touch and always extremely responsive.”