As always, you’ve provoked thought with your blog.

Here is some counterpoint on your conclusion that for early-stage enterprises a “pure hunter” is a better fit. (Your comment on 7/25/2010.)

In my experience, many entrepreneurs and promoters — pure hunters — who are focused on getting their business going, and not paying much attention to the “process” of their organization (including corporate paperwork and infrastructural pieces like professional accounting services, etc.) find themselves in big trouble down the road. Too often their own vision and self-assessment is too optimistic and they make promises that cannot be met. They overstate their abilities and make rosy (or outright foolish) projections. They underestimate the true cost of doing business and quickly find themselves insufficiently capitalized and spending too much time searching for loans and investments, rather than sales and profits to sustain the business. To these people, corporate or partnership paperwork, monthly accounting reports, paying quarterly taxes, etc., are deemed a tedious, time-consuming and sometimes expensive process that can be deferred because they’re not so urgent and don’t hurt anyone. Yet, those easily-identifiable errors are the reasons the vast majority of new start-ups and one-man (or woman) businesses fail, usually within the first year or two. Thus, in your context, if a business survives three years of operations, the creative and aggressive hunter is secretly both a hunter and a farmer, or is wise enough to engage the farmers needed to deal with the most egregious shortcomings of the “pure” hunter personality.

That said, as a man named HUNTER, and descended from 1,000+ years of HUNTERS, I would agree that a hunter is ALWAYS the BEST fit! But heaven forbid that I be a “pure” hunter! Under the definitions you’ve provided, I believe it’s always best to have a hunter/farmer combination in every enterprise, early-stage or otherwise. But that might be made up of a complementary team of diverse personalities, insiders and outsiders, etc., not just a single individual.

See, for great analysis of these traits in some of the most successful American businesses, BLUEPRINT TO A BILLION, by David G. Thomson, John Wiley & Sons (2006). I especially like Chapters 7-9.

Keep up the good work, Bob. Excellent points always.

Edward O. HUNTER (not Farmer)
Attorney and Corporate Governance Expert
Irvine, California 92612