You completely misunderstood OP's argument, IMHO.
A dispute between Obama and Putin over a peninsula where your company has maybe 1.5 users suddenly results in you being locked out of a market with millions of potential users. And the conclusion is that when selling abroad, you need to be aware that vagaries of international politics can drastically affect your business, and that an American software company will be seen - by policymakers in both countries - as a tool of American foreign policy.
Doesn't this cut both ways? If US based companies are locked out of the Russian market, don't Russian based companies run the risk of being locked out of the larger and more influential US market? If forced to choose, I know which of the two I'd pick.
Of course, and in fact it has happened a few times, e.g. see [1]. But Russian based companies tend to be aware of the possibility and plan accordingly. OP's audience is Silicon Valley startups trying to enter foreign markets for the first time, and for them the idea might be rather unfamiliar.
[1] http://insidehpc.com/2014/01/us-lifts-trade-ban-russian-supe...
Why do you assume that to be the case? Just because US companies don't need to rely on foreign markets doesn't mean they're somehow unaware of basic geopolitics.
With that said, business in Japan is quite difficult if you're not Japanese, though that's starting to change in recent years. Some say their startup ecosystem is 10 years behind that of the US.
Can you elaborate on how it's a good, or neutral, thing? Startups may be imperfect creatures, but I perceive them to have a net-positive influence on the economy (and, to be clear, I don't work for one). How is their absence from the Japanese economy a good thing?
The 10 year comment was from a discussion I had with a Japanese investor/entrepreneur while in Tokyo last fall. He built his other businesses in the US, and related the current state of Japan's startup scene (funding, opportunities, etc) as being similar to that of the US about 10 years ago.
It's about a third the size of the US economy.
Eastern or Western?
I've never understood why Putin is singled out by the media for such vicious treatment when, as you yourself pointed out, there is absolutely no shortage of political corruption stories they could run with.
Still, it's a lot easier for the American public to swallow that a man half a world away, from a traditional enemy figure, could be evil and corrupt, rather than examine the fact that some of their own representatives might be the same. No no, that would throw into question their belief that American is the worlds shining bastion of freedom and democracy, a notion that they've been spoon-fed since childhood.
How many political opponents has Clinton had murdered?