I think some of the other commenters addressed this well, but as for Russia, it's a terrible example and has a lot of the same problems that Nigeria appears to; Newsweek just ran an article on the subject: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/14/putin-s-russia-exile-busi... .
As for China and India, both countries have GDPs that have been growing at 10% per year for more than two decades, and not purely from oil or other natural resource profits, which appears true of what growth Russia and Nigeria have experienced.
That's not to say India and China will continue their incredible growth forever, or that either country is ideal for startups, but my impression (once again: might be wrong) is that despite the problems startups face, those problems are not as tremendous as they are in Nigeria or Russia.
In addition, as far as I know neither India nor China has produced any global Internet software product companies along the lines of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, or Facebook.
"I think some of the other commenters addressed this well, but as for Russia, it's a terrible example and has a lot of the same problems that Nigeria appears to; Newsweek just ran an article on the subject: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/14/putin-s-russia-exile-busi...
You can continue to read placed PR Newsweek articles and be an idiot (the part about the "has a lot of the same problems that Nigeria appears to" is sort of the point of using it as an example), or you can do a quick google search:
As for China and India, both countries have GDPs that have been growing at 10% per year for more than two decades, and not purely from oil or other natural resource profits, which appears true of what growth Russia and Nigeria have experienced.
That's not to say India and China will continue their incredible growth forever, or that either country is ideal for startups, but my impression (once again: might be wrong) is that despite the problems startups face, those problems are not as tremendous as they are in Nigeria or Russia.
In addition, as far as I know neither India nor China has produced any global Internet software product companies along the lines of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, or Facebook.