Key takeaways:

--Your limit to opportunities is your own mindset. 

--Founders should build their network consistently over time. It will help you understand the fundraising journey, and bring you honest feedback about how long the journey will take.

--Early stage investors are "founder evaluators" more so than "business evaluators". Help them believe you have the network, skills, grit, intelligence and flexibility it takes to get you to the Series B and beyond.

Mac Concell - Rarebreed Ventures

Mckeever E. (Mac) Conwell, 2nd, is a Baltimore native and attended Morgan State University, majoring in Computer Science. In 2006 at the age of 19 he joined a co-op program with the Department of Defense where he achieved Top Secret Security Clearance. He went on to become a government contractor doing software development in multiple computer languages and working for several companies, including Northrop Grumman and Booz | Allen | Hamilton. In October of 2009 Mac co-founded his first tech startup, Given.to. The Given.to team successfully completed two accelerators, Accelerate Baltimore and NewMe Accelerator, where he was later named entrepreneur-in-residence. Mac and his team sold the technology in 2014. His next venture, RedBerry, was accepted into the Dreamit Ventures Accelerator in Philadelphia.

Mac has been a guest on Huffington Post Live several times and his companies have been featured in many media outlets such as USA Today, Washington Post, BET, CNN Headline News, and Black Enterprise. Brought on board at TEDCO in the newly-created role of Deal Team Coordinator, Mac is using all of the knowledge he has gained working for both public and private sectors. Mac is responsible for the coordination of all stages of new deals brought into TEDCO.