Subject: File No. 4-692
From: Andrew Thompson, J.D.
Affiliation: Founder, Tinker Street Funding

February 9, 2016

My experience in the marketplace suggests that an increase in the dollar requirements to qualify as an accredited investor would have a de-stabilizing effect on the investment markets by reducing the potential number of investors and signaling to the markets that some previously accredited investors were not true qualified to make the investments they did.

I believe it is a much better approach, in terms of enabling the marketplace to exist for startup capital and other early stage companies, to lower the threshold for accredited investors and to make the process of accreditation more self-validating. The investor can then assert for himself/herself the degree to which he/she feels capable of taking not eh risk of the particular investment opportunity.

If the system was failing us, we would have seen more fraud and investment losses through the markets that have come to exist for accredited investors. This has not been the case.