[newyankee]

The funny thing is that in less open societies, connections are almost everything in entrepreneurship, off course it also means you need to know how to leverage it.

Not necessarily a positive thing, because it is the same group of politico-business class that capture the same ideas and innovations for themselves. If you have ever seen Shark tank India you will understand what I am saying.

In that respect US Silicon Valley culture seemed like a breath of fresh air, however I feel there are only certain specific combinations of history, economics and culture that enabled this. I doubt it is really possible to bootstrap new crazy ideas easily, one because incumbents are not as laggards as before.