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Prashanth Dhulipala, a California-based software engineer, writes in response to Arun Natarajan's article, "Where Money for Start-ups Really Comes From":

Hi Arun,
Just came across this interesting write up on the new avtaar of friends and family in the world of investing.
It does make sense that tax concessions be offered to entrepreneurs who are just starting out, and who are being funded by friends and family. The question though is, what is the success rate of these startups? Probably too early to say, but it is too big a risk to wait out the results. While investing in "grey hairs" is probably tending to the extremes, I would not mind a government sponsored regulatory board that would assess the worthiness of such startups that would at least look for diluted forms of the "provens".

Thanks
Prashanth Dhulipala

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