It's the chicken or the egg question and in all truth you need both to grow each other. You need to figure out about the minimum level of businesses you need to keep customers coming back and back. Second, you need to offer those business a free trial period, say 3-6 months, so that you have the businesses that will attract the people, but the businesses are not throwing away their money on an empty project, while you are recruiting your people. You also need to market yourself and start early, while you are still setting things up. Get the word out: make youtube videos. Ask other sites to attach a link to your site. Write on blogs. Leave links on blogs (it is a bit of spamming but if the blog owners don't like it, they'll delete the link). Even better if you can do a trade for service with those same blog owners. Be creative and MARKET MARKET MARKET. There's an old Russian saying: not advertising your business is like flirting with a girl across a non-lit room.

I lived in the US for 28 years before returning to Russia. My name is not easy for Americans to pronounce (anything outside of the Anglo-Saxon standard names seems to fit that category). Short version of Stanislov is Stas, so I went with that for them, but I never would change my name. Take pride in the name you were given and the culture you came from. Your parents gave you that name and you have it for a reason. Just because others don't pronounce it just right is no reason to throw away your culture. Oh and Misha is the short Russian version of Michael, if you americanized it, it would have to be Mike.

I am assuming you are in the US? I'll assume you are. The fact that the patent has been approved proves that in the it can be, its a precedent and US law is precedent bound. As for lawyers, no you'll have to pay for your own lawyers.

What kinds of start ups? You may find some scattered IT here and there but I highly doubt you'll find a lot of high tech. There are reasons why the term industry clusters was coined. High tech requires more than just facilities and infrastructure, it requires people and teams that are more than 10meters from each other start to degrade in performance. Simple reality. Also, hi tech heroes tend to want the thrills of a big city or a city and if not them, then their families...and good schools and so on. Setting up in the middle of no-where means a lot more expenses when you need to hire talented people and relocate them. As for Russia, out in the middle of no where we have a lot of farming start ups: huge intensive growth orchards in Chechnya, with a German partner. Angus ranches, fully automated, out in south western Siberia and so on.Agriculture or mineral/petro extraction rules in those areas.

Let me ask you this: have you engineered the program? Have you gamed it? Drawn action cases...such as: say I want to register...what actions must I take? Have you accurately defined it each functionality and exactly what you want it to do, what steps are needed for each course of action. How one portion interacts with another? The worst thing is to have a foggy idea, with out step by step pencil and paper action board designing and just have a programmer start programming. Most of your work should be done before the programmer starts to program. Otherwise you get worthless or even worse then worthless spaghetti code.

The better question is: what will make your online bookstore stand out from the others, especially big boys like Amazon? If all you want to do is sell books, use Amazon's platform as a network seller. What in your business plan makes you unique enough to edge out a niche in a crowded market? If you're interested, we can discuss this further.

All major platforms and standards are built upon convincing the world that you have the best controls for what ever it is that is being covered. Before worrying whether it should be in PDF or how to sell it, you should worry about "selling" it. First, of course copyright all your work. Now you need to get at least a few major companies to buy in on it so that you can then push it as the standard setter and license the platform's use. My suggestion is to give it away for free for a couple key customers in exchange for using them as testimonials. You can then leverage them to your best advantage in future marketing. Depending on where you are trying to move this and what it is exactly, I may be able to assist you, especially in the Russian market.

Can you give more information on what your product is? Then we can figure out what you need in it. Sounds like electronics...but what?

Well you should store it in a database, most probably an SQL based database. MySQL is a fine start, free and easy to set up. But, you had best start thinking about security issues, especially if you are planning on storing credit card and other personal information. Hackers go right through the standard fare and many companies do nothing to encrypt their data at all, which in some countries is a criminal offense. Best hire a professional to look at your system setup and see what can be done.

Conception, that is, the early engineering work is your most most important and should be longest and most intense period. Any fool can sit down and start writing code and what comes out is usually called spaghetti code, meaning a tangled mess. You need to sit down, work out specifically what the customer wants. LISTEN to the customer, write it down. Work it through on paper. Present a realist cost analysis of what the customer is asking for. Once the customer sees a realist cost analysis (don't tamper it down because you will almost always go over anyways) he may change his mind and cut back. Non-technical customers rarely realize the actual cost of development. Make mock ups of the screens and a diagram board of how the program works...scenario out each step and option to see how the logic will need to be formed. Work and rework and rework you database tables, on paper. You need to think through a 90% solution on paper before you lay down even 1 line of code.