In 2023, protection tech recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled as much as the workplaces of nuclear fusion startup Fuse in a black suburban, donning his signature cowboy hat. He picked up a latest Fuse rent and proceeded to regale her with tales of his previous recruiting days. One story concerned prostitutes attending a recruiting occasion (“not for intercourse,” Conway clarified to TechCrunch).
The brand new rent was not completely happy. “I assumed I instructed it in a humorous means,” Conway sighed, admitting he was being “an a–gap.”
Fuse founder JC Btaiche caught wind of the dialog and agreed, promptly firing Conway – though Btaiche instructed TechCrunch that telling the prostitution story wasn’t the one inappropriate factor that Conway had completed.
However Conway, who has change into one of many protection tech business’s largest behind-the-scenes energy brokers, didn’t hand over on Fuse. Conway has recruited for a few of the buzziest protection and exhausting tech corporations in Silicon Valley over the past decade, like Palantir and Mach Industries. He spent practically half a decade doing recruitment at Joe Lonsdale’s enterprise agency 8VC for the agency and its portfolio firms, and since final yr, as the top of expertise at enterprise agency A* Capital.
So even after being dismissed, Conway continued to pitch candidates to Btaiche and woo prospects with flights in his personal airplane or provides to “go blow s— up out within the desert,” Conway mentioned. After a number of months, Fuse reinstated Conway. He’s now recruited greater than seven folks to Fuse, together with Fuse’s chief technique officer, Laura Thomas, a former CIA officer.
In some ways, Conway is a stand-in for the entire business: wealthy, decided, liable to telling unbelievable tales and, by all accounts, sensible. In response to the dozen folks TC interviewed for this story, Conway is wildly profitable at luring very proficient folks away from secure jobs and into startup life. “There’s a line between loopy and genius,” Btaiche mentioned. “And I believe he’s simply on that line.”
As protection tech funding soared to nearly $3 billion final yr, Conway is able to persuade the following era to assist make new-age nuclear reactors or AI-powered weapons.
“There’s an entire group of younger folks within the Valley, usually working jobs within the protection sector or in nationwide safety or on very formidable, troublesome issues,” mentioned Gregory Dorman, a latest Princeton graduate who labored with entrepreneur and A* accomplice Kevin Hartz on his new safety startup Sauron, because of Conway’s introduction. “They usually’re there due to Peterson.”
‘Doesn’t comply’ with security rules
Conway’s signature transfer is to take candidates up in his tiny airplane. “I prefer to joke that I make them sick till they settle for the phrases of our offers,” he mentioned.
I first met him at an airport in San Carlos, California, shortly earlier than I climbed into his tiny two-seater airplane, bought with a mortgage from Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar. A small signal within the cockpit warned me: “This plane is an experimental light-sport plane and doesn’t adjust to federal security rules for normal plane.”
A couple of minutes later, we had been hovering over the shimmering San Francisco Bay as Conway recounted his fablelike life story. His father, Peterson Conway VII, dodged the draft, bought LSD in Tokyo, and ultimately moved to Afghanistan within the 70s with Conway’s mom, a Mormon college trainer. After a sequence of escapades throughout the Center East and Africa, they moved to Carmel to boost Conway and his brother, however ultimately divorced.
“My dad threw himself off there,” Conway mentioned nonchalantly as we soared over the Golden Gate Bridge. He then defined that the tried suicide was unsuccessful. His father was caught by the nets and is alive and effectively at the moment, promoting antiques in his Carmel store.
Conway rebelled towards his father by briefly pursuing normalcy, attending Dartmouth to check economics. However after faculty, within the early 2000s, he discovered himself changing into a recruiter.
In Conway’s model of occasions, he was driving his motorbike round San Francisco, a cowboy in quest of workplace area. He noticed a warehouse with a ramp, rode onto it and ran straight into Hartz. On the time, Hartz was within the early phases of constructing Xoom, a fintech service for worldwide cash transfers that was ultimately purchased by PayPal.
Conway mentioned Hartz requested him if he had any abilities. “None,” Conway answered. “However I can carry lunches. I’m an honest author. I had an Airstream trailer – I’m like, we will go online.”
Hartz laughed after I requested him concerning the story, saying, “That’s all solely false.” In response to Hartz, Conway merely rented workplace area in the identical constructing and that’s how he began recruiting for Xoom and later, the broader PayPal crowd.
When PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel launched Palantir in 2003, Conway was in the correct place on the proper time and started recruiting for the agency. Conway apparently had no official title on the protection firm, ”however was ‘simply Peterson,’” like a protection tech “mononymous artist within the fashion of Prince or Madonna,” joked Gabe Rosen, 8VC’s resident humanities scholar who labored with Conway at Palantir.
Palantir despatched Conway internationally to construct out its worldwide groups. In response to Conway, the corporate wished workers with an “inner compass and conviction,” individuals who had grappled with the values they had been raised with and paved their very own path.
For instance, Conway claimed he would get missives like “discover me a Jew that married a Christian from the outback of Australia that was homosexual.” Palantir had no remark.
Conway was recognized for getting recruits’ consideration by sending handwritten letters with wax seals. His strategies had been profitable, touchdown folks like Michael Leiter, the previous director of the Nationwide Counterterrorism Heart, and lots of of Palantir’s worldwide hires.
Unconventional strategies
Final summer time, Conway and his father flew to the Mojave desert in Hartz’s airplane, borrowed for the event. Like some type of American Dynamism mirage, they noticed a gaggle of younger males mounting a drone to the again of a truck.
It was a testing session for Mach Industries, a weapons firm based by Ethan Thornton when he was 19 years previous. Mach is among the handful of protection and {hardware} firms that has Conway recruited for as head of expertise at A*. Mach has since raised over $80 million from traders like Bedrock and Sequoia Capital.
Whereas these males arrange orange cones and explosive gear for his or her engineering exams, Conway took folks for journeys in Hartz’s airplane. “He hit the bottom so exhausting, so many occasions, touchdown within the Mojave,” Hartz sighed. “All the things got here unfastened.” Conway denied Hartz’s account, saying the airplane merely “bought fairly soiled” and he misplaced a window masking.
In response to Conway, he recruited SpaceX alum Gabriela Hobe and Fasil Mulatu Kero, Mach’s vice chairman of producing and former Tesla worker. “Ethan has in all probability paid me over one million {dollars} to do what I do for him,” Conway mentioned, though he later denied that determine.
It looks like everybody within the protection tech business has an eye-popping story about Conway. One time, after Conway ordered an Uber and hit it off with the driving force, he shocked a founder by setting him up with a trip and telling the founder to interview the driving force for a job.
One other time, Fuse founder Btaiche mentioned Conway left a Porsche with the keys in it on the airport for a recruit, who was then a authorities contractor, to drive when he touched down. The corporate later clarified that it was a four-seater Porsche, loaned to the candidate so the corporate may get monetary savings on Ubers.
The candidate took the Porsche for his or her conferences and ended the day at Conway’s house, a sprawling compound within the rich California coastal city Carmel-by-the-Sea, stuffed along with his father’s antiques and animal components from searching expeditions. Conway hosts common dinners for candidates there (his father cooks), in addition to, in accordance with Conway, events starting from a birthday bash for Joe Lonsdale to a marriage for Sankar.
However Btaiche mentioned Conway’s actual superpower isn’t his stunts, however relatively his capacity to speak about “candidates in a extra human means, relatively than simply taking a look at resumes and credentials.”
For Fuse hiring, Conway had Btaiche brainstorm what upbringing may create somebody who can lead a workforce, or carry new concepts to the engineers; because of this, they’ve scouted folks from rural areas, individuals who grew up as athletes, and people who find themselves obsessive about gaming.
As for profitable candidates over, Btaiche mentioned that Conway sells folks on the crucial of defending America. “When you’re engaged on one thing that’s really mission-driven,” he mentioned. “I believe Peterson can ship that story.”
Dorman, one of many individuals who had the Conway Expertise, was a philosophy main at Princeton debating between careers within the Valley or New York when he met the famed recruiter. Conway persuaded him to decide on the Valley. “Peterson convinces people who there’s really numerous journey there,” he mentioned.
Conway has customary himself as one thing of a cowboy within the Valley for years, and now the remainder of tech may need lastly caught up. He applauds the present curiosity in American Dynamism, the time period coined by Andreessen Horowitz for government-adjacent firms. “It’s simply excellent. It’s proper on the border of fanaticism,” Conway mentioned. “It’s change into its personal faith.”
Essential character vitality
There’s a standard theme in how folks describe Conway: a genius, an influential participant in protection tech, and, at occasions, a legal responsibility.
As an example, a number of days after I flew in his airplane, he referred to as me and requested, “Did you see the information?”
The day earlier than, Conway had taken a 6 am flight from the Carmel space to Silicon Valley. Within the early morning darkness, Conway failed to tug out a flashlight when he was checking his gas gauge and, because of this, misinterpret the gauge. “I made an assumption that was solely pilot error,” he mentioned. As he was flying, he realized he didn’t have sufficient within the tank to make it to the closest airport.
Conway regaled the story to me in legendary proportions: a fork in his path, a selection between good and evil. As he described it, he initially thought his greatest probability at residing was to land on a sports activities discipline at a close-by college. “I began freaking out {that a} child was no match for a propeller,” he mentioned.
So he opted to land his airplane on Freeway 85, touching down in the direction of oncoming visitors in hopes that it might be safer for drivers. Miraculously, his two-seater glided onto the concrete, leaving Conway and the encircling vehicles unhurt.
Conway then warned me that I had been a hair’s breath away from the same destiny. “If we had flown any additional, we’d’ve run out of fuel,” he mentioned.
That wasn’t fairly true; he instructed me later that had flown the airplane at the least one time after our flight. However he painted our journey collectively in an existential gentle, making it unforgettable. After spending the day with him (and a subsequent two months truth checking his many exaggerations), I realized that Conway is singular in his epic storytelling abilities. That’s why he will get employed by so many wonderful firms. And fired. After which rehired as soon as once more.
As Dorman put it, “he’s a brilliant unconventional recruiter.” But, he’s additionally “higher than some other recruiter.”
