{"id":966,"date":"2007-08-03T13:52:56","date_gmt":"2007-08-03T13:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vibrant.bdnvisuals.com\/2007\/08\/03\/hunter-an-engineer-with-business-in-his-blood-new-mexico-business-weekly\/"},"modified":"2007-08-03T13:52:56","modified_gmt":"2007-08-03T13:52:56","slug":"hunter-an-engineer-with-business-in-his-blood-new-mexico-business-weekly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/hunter-an-engineer-with-business-in-his-blood-new-mexico-business-weekly\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunter: an engineer with business in his blood (New Mexico Business Weekly)"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Kevin Robinson-Avila,\u00a0NMBW staff<\/em><\/p>\n

Having come from a family of entrepreneurs that stretches\u00a0back two generations, it’s little wonder Lem Hunter became a\u00a0businessman.<\/p>\n

But while his family instilled an entrepreneurial spirit in him,\u00a0Hunter’s natural talent as an engineer coupled with an almost\u00a0innate business savvy has made him a particularly successful\u00a0entrepreneur. He built Mechtronic Solutions Inc. (MSI)\u2014a\u00a0$3.5 million engineering and light electronics firm\u2014from\u00a0scratch. He now heads a new startup, Vibrant Corp., which just\u00a0received $1 million in seed funds from angel investors.<\/p>\n

But despite his achievements, Hunter remains a humble man\u00a0who insists that great mentors and sheer luck got him where he\u00a0is today.<\/p>\n

„I’m the luckiest guy you’re ever gonna meet,“ he says. „I’m\u00a0largely the product of a handful of people who have chosen to\u00a0invest time and energy in bringing me along as a businessman.“<\/p>\n

While mentors did contribute to his success, those who\u00a0know him say his achievements are his own doing.<\/p>\n

„I think he’d be successful at anything he chooses to do,“\u00a0says J.T. Michelson, one of Vibrant’s investors. „He has real\u00a0skills as an entrepreneur and as an engineer. He selects\u00a0experienced partners and employees, and he’s a good listener\u00a0and leader.“<\/p>\n

MSI CEO John Spruce says Hunter makes his partners and\u00a0employees feel valued.<\/p>\n

„For him, the people come first,“ Spruce says. „People are not just a number here. He’s able to\u00a0quickly grasp the needs of customers, partners and employees and then he makes the effort to meet\u00a0those needs.“<\/p>\n

Ironically, Hunter was not much of a student. A native of Southern California, Hunter graduated\u00a0from high school in 1982, but didn’t earn his degree in mechanical engineering until 10 years later.<\/span><\/p>\n

He took classes on and off at two different universities and two community colleges in California\u00a0before enrolling at the University of New Mexico in 1988.<\/p>\n

„It took five schools and two states to finally get my bachelor’s degree from UNM,“ Hunter says.\u00a0„I bounced around for years at hodgepodge jobs.“<\/p>\n

He pumped gas, worked at a gym and a daycare center, and even tried his hand at auto mechanics\u00a0with the goal of working on race cars. His career as an engineer didn’t begin until the mid-1980’s,\u00a0when he joined his uncle’s sprinkler factory in San Diego.<\/p>\n

„When I finally started working in engineering, I realized that to go further I needed to go back to school,“\u00a0Hunter says. „I loved designing and building machinery, so I bit the bullet and went on to earn my degree at\u00a0UNM.“<\/p>\n

After graduating, it seemed a natural path for Hunter to start his own business given his family’s long\u00a0entrepreneurial history. Hunter’s paternal grandfather owned a foundry and his maternal grandfather a citrus\u00a0<\/span>farm. His father and uncles ran an aluminum products business after World War II that specialized in venetian\u00a0blinds. That firm was eventually sold off and later became HunterDouglas\u2014one of the largest window\u00a0covering manufacturers in the world.<\/p>\n

„I’ve been surrounded my entire life by entrepreneurs,“ Hunter says. „Dinner conversations were always\u00a0about banking and customers. All that made it pretty natural for me to go into business.“<\/p>\n

Hunter started in 1993 as an independent contract engineer working out of his home in Albuquerque. At the\u00a0time, he faced little competition, allowing his business to rapidly grow.<\/p>\n

„There weren’t a lot of prototype fabrication companies in New Mexico back then, so I fit a real niche,“\u00a0Hunter says.<\/p>\n

Within two years, his company, Hunter Engineering, reached $300,000 in revenue and six employees.\u00a0In 1995, the business moved to its first commercial space\u2014a 2,000-square-foot facility in the North\u00a0Jefferson business corridor. It expanded to 5,000 square feet in 1997, and in 2004 it moved to its current\u00a020,000-square-foot location on Academy Parkway. The firm, now called Mechtronic Solutions Inc., has 32\u00a0employees.<\/p>\n

MSI manages a mix of commercial and government engineering projects, including ongoing contracts with\u00a0Sandia National Laboratories. The company was named as one of Sandia’s nine „strategic suppliers“ in 2005.<\/p>\n

With MSI well-established, Hunter has decided to pursue new horizons. In 2005, he formed Vibrant Corp., a\u00a0high-tech startup that uses proprietary technology to do non-destructive testing on aerospace components.<\/p>\n

Vibrant spent a year incubating under MSI’s roof, and this year spun off on its own.<\/p>\n

„I’m still the largest single shareholder in MSI, but the management team purchased control of the company\u00a0in March,“ Hunter says. „I’m dedicated full time now to Vibrant.“<\/p>\n

In June, Vibrant achieved its first success, winning a $10,000 contract to help Boeing Co. evaluate a new\u00a0method of manufacturing aerospace components. Vibrant will test the components to see if the new process is\u00a0making strong, uniform parts.<\/p>\n

„It’s just a small contract, but it gets us in the front door,“ Hunter told NMBW after signing on with Boeing.<\/p>\n

„Boeing is one of the nation’s two largest airframe manufacturers. If we demonstrate our capabilities there, it\u00a0could lead to bigger contracts.“<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as an emerging serial entrepreneur, Hunter offers advice to other startups as a member of the\u00a0New Mexico Angels board of directors.<\/p>\n

In his spare time, he takes to the skies in a Cessna 340 that he owns and keeps at Double Eagle Airport. And\u00a0when he’s not flying, he spends his time with his wife and three children.<\/p>\n

At 45, Hunter says his proudest achievement so far was building a well-respected engineering company that\u00a0stands on its own.<\/p>\n

„My biggest success and pride in business has been to transition MSI from its roots as a one-man show into a\u00a0company with a team of people that together can take it to much greater heights than I ever could alone,“ he\u00a0says. „MSI has become\u00a0a free-standing company, and I’m proud to say that I played a fundamental role in\u00a0making that happen.“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having come from a family of entrepreneurs that stretches back two generations, it’s little wonder Lem Hunter became a businessman. But while his family instilled an entrepreneurial spirit in him, Hunter’s natural talent as an engineer coupled with an almost innate business savvy has made him a particularly successful entrepreneur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-company-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibrantndt.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}