REAL ENTREPRENEURS DON'T MAKE EXCUSES: They make lemonade from the lemons and go IPO

I'm staring out of my jet lagged eyes at the cityscape of Seoul, Korea. Home to hot digital games and food that will turn you mouth into red hot. I'm here helping a couple of great startup leaders prepare for their first board meeting tomorrow morning.

This is the office of Nurien, the world leader of 3D social networks. It was founded by two Cornell graduates, one a former student of mine. The closed beta of their first game will begin in the coming months.

Today they closed on a large Round A financing from world-class venture capital firms who do not have offices here.

The company rocks! Lots of creative employees (Nurenians), attractive working quarters and American business methods in a high intensity industrial center of the global economy. The country has optical fiber to every home. Wireless is everywhere. Taxi drivers use two mobile phones, talk via Blue tooth, have GPSS and digital fare meters with receipt printers. Stores are filled with buyers of world class brands, and giant advertising LCD screens light up the day and night from miles of skyscrapers. This place is hot!

Nurien has special meaning to its root name, but more importantly, in this intense labor market, to me it means "rock" in Korea. And the co-founders, Andy and Tim, know it. In fact they have deliberately taken advantage of the situation here. They have created a startup that stands out so brightly that it cannot be overlooked. The rest of the startups in the city have employees that work for cash wages (not very lucrative) and report to classical Asian managers (not much fun). So for Nurien, a company culture created deliberatively has become a local magnet, attracting the best of the best in the competitive talent market. And it is very competitive: this is the world center for massive player on-line games. The games are hot (make a ton of money) in Korea and China and the rest of the world. Just ask Shanda, Giant Interactive and Perfect World (IPOs now on Wall Street).

Do you think like Andy and Tim? Test yourself: have you complained recently that your local labor market is too tough to compete in? Or that you are missing great investors? Or that your neighborhood is a poor place to do a global startup?

Andy and Tim did not. They saw opportunity where others saw negative conditions surrounding them. And now they are launching a series of breathtaking games created by inventive people who are excited about working with Nurien. Andy and Tim made lemonade from what others saw as lemons. I hope you do that.

BOTTOM LINE: To launch your startup where you live, look for the positives and sew them together as part of your competitive advantage. Think about how to use a company culture to out-maneuver your competition. Cogitate on what management style would attract the best of the best to rush to come to work for you. Those are signs of the serial entrepreneur who knows that with a magnet that attracts top talent comes one of the most powerful elements of unfair advantage building. They know how to make lemonade out of even the most sour of lemons.