Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions. In a study published i...

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.

        In a study published in 2012, the author Noah Wasserman - then a professor at Harvard Business School - studied 10,000 startups, of which 40% were founded by those who are friends. [I] And his research showed that companies with friend - founders were less likely to work.

        [II] Wasserman says that when people are establishing a company, having a familiar face along for the ride can be very comforting. [III] But he says starting up with friends is just like playing with fire: “It can either forge a stronger team and relationship or blow up the team and relationship.” His research showed that the most stable structure for starting a company is, in fact, a group of strangers, rather than co - workers, family or friends. [IV] This is because strangers have fewer expectations of each other, and there’s no concern about affecting a friendship or close personal relationship when bringing up mistakes or issues.

        Companies created by friends, Wasserman says, are more likely to fail for reasons linked to people being overconfident and underprepared. “When we found with friends, we are confident that our team will be of the stronger variety,” says Wasserman. Yet friends often have no experience of each other professionally, and don’t test the waters before founding. “We assume that we know each other, but have you ever seen your best friend in a work context and know how he or she acts there?”, he comments.

        Even when friend - founders know each other both professionally and personally discussing tough topics can be hard. Wasserman explains that a common experience among friends is a tendency to avoid necessary but tension – filled conversations for fear of souring their relationship. But this can have severe consequences: “Because we avoid discussing that bad scenario and how we could avoid it, we increase the chances that it will occur.” Hamish Grierson, CEO of a London - based health - tech firm, agrees that awkward conversations need to take place. A lifestyle brand he set up with a friend didn’t work, and the relationship was partly to blame. “We spent way too much time focused on improving our launch product than we did on identifying whether anyone wanted the thing we were creating.”

        Despite these challenges, Gabrielle Adams, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, believes that going into business with someone you already know well has advantages. “Good friends know how to work out conflict,” she explains. In fact, friendship may be what keeps you going in difficult times. Researchers from London’s Cass Business School and the University of Pennsylvania examined how friendship between founding members impacts on behavior when a startup’s finances start to suffer and found that startups established by people with a strong friendship were more likely to persist if a venture looked like it was failing.

[Adapted from bbc.com]

Question 31: Where in the passage does the following sentence best fit?

“This sense of familiarity can help ease the stress and uncertainties of starting a new venture.”

        A. [I]                        B. [II]                                C. [III]                                D. [IV]