The comment about Venezuela is astute -- I wish he had followed that up. Out of a couple dozen venezuelano entrepreneurs and owners I know, only 2 are planning new business (one in tourism and one in PR).
The rest are desperate to cash their chips and get around the capital export controls. Five or six have moved out of the country entirely. (Every time a bell rings and angel gets its wings. Every time Chávez sneezes a condo agent in Miami gets a commission)
Forget the politics of it. If you scare off two generations of business owners, in a few years your economy will be f-u-c-k-e-d.
Believe it or not, but setting up business in Russia is incredibly simple and welcome. The overall entrepreneurship environment is very warm, the taxes are very low (as a small business you can choose to pay flat 6% or 13%) and you don't need to hire expensive lawyers or tax accountants (to file all the innumerous IRS forms), cause you can do all the paper work on your own easily! Even if you cannot or not bother to, you can alway hire a part-time accountant girl for cheap. What's more, there are no problems with tech savvy talented people in Russia, you can hire a really good hacker just for $1000-$1500 a month! And yes, there is a lot many web startups and software development companies in Russia, ours is one of them :-).
The only problem for startups here in Russia is lack of venture capital, as all the capitalists were frightened out away by Putin, who sued YUKOS to death for not paying taxes and hiding crime. So, most startups here are bootstrapping self-supported profitable busineses, as there is no way other.
I pesonally know a guy who developed mobile IM client and sold it to well-known russian internet giant for $1MM. He's now starting a new company for developing desktop client :-).
That's good to hear! I have no opinion on Russia; I know nothing about it past or present and I'm embarassed to say I at first thought the original article was somewhat accurate.
But VE is pretty bad unless you can navigate around some big and scary forces. Some people are getting rich there but it's tricky. The diversity of the economy (which has always been kind of bad because of the distortion of the oil business) is getting worse as far as I can tell.
The rest are desperate to cash their chips and get around the capital export controls. Five or six have moved out of the country entirely. (Every time a bell rings and angel gets its wings. Every time Chávez sneezes a condo agent in Miami gets a commission)
Forget the politics of it. If you scare off two generations of business owners, in a few years your economy will be f-u-c-k-e-d.