In 2023, protection tech recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled as much as the places of work 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 He picked up a latest Fuse rent and proceeded to regale her with tales of his outdated recruiting days. One story concerned prostitutes attending a recruiting occasion (“not for intercourse,” Conway clarified to TechCrunch).
The brand new rent was not pleased. “I believed I advised it in a humorous manner,” 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 advised TechCrunch that telling the prostitution story wasn’t the one inappropriate factor that Conway had executed.
However Conway, who has develop into one of many protection tech business’s largest behind-the-scenes energy brokers, didn’t surrender on Fuse. Conway has recruited for a number of the buzziest protection and laborious tech corporations in Silicon Valley during the last decade, like Palantir and Mach Industries. He spent almost half a decade doing recruitment at Joe Lonsdale’s enterprise agency 8VC for the agency and its portfolio corporations, 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 non-public airplane or presents to “go blow s— up out within the desert,” Conway stated. After a number of months, Fuse reinstated Conway. He has 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, good. In accordance with the dozen folks TC interviewed for this story, Conway is wildly profitable at luring very gifted folks away from secure jobs and into startup life. “There’s a line between loopy and genius,” Btaiche stated. “And I feel he’s simply on that line.”
As protection tech funding soared to nearly $3 billion final yr, Conway is able to persuade the subsequent technology to assist make new-age nuclear reactors or AI-powered weapons.
“There’s an entire neighborhood of younger folks within the Valley, usually working jobs within the protection sector or in nationwide safety or on very formidable, troublesome issues,” stated Gregory Dorman, a latest Princeton graduate who labored with entrepreneur and A* companion Kevin Hartz on his new safety startup Sauron, due to 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 wish to joke that I make them sick till they settle for the phrases of our offers,” he stated.
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 traditional 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, offered LSD in Tokyo, and finally moved to Afghanistan within the 70s with Conway’s mom, a Mormon faculty trainer. After a sequence of escapades throughout the Center East and Africa, they moved to Carmel to boost Conway and his brother, however finally divorced.
“My dad threw himself off there,” Conway stated 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 nicely at this time, promoting antiques in his Carmel store.
Conway rebelled in opposition to his father by briefly pursuing normalcy, attending Dartmouth to check economics. However after school, within the early 2000s, he discovered himself turning into a recruiter.
In Conway’s model of occasions, he was using his motorbike round San Francisco, a cowboy searching for workplace house. 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 finally purchased by PayPal.
Conway stated Hartz requested him if he had any expertise. “None,” Conway answered. “However I can convey lunches. I’m a good author. I had an Airstream trailer – I’m like, we are able to log on.”
Hartz laughed after I requested him in regards to the story, saying, “That’s all solely false.” In accordance with Hartz, Conway merely rented workplace house 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 fitting 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 the world over to construct out its worldwide groups. In accordance with Conway, the corporate needed workers with an “inside 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 identified 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 plenty 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 sort 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 outdated. Mach is without doubt one of the handful of protection and {hardware} corporations 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 checks, Conway took folks for journeys in Hartz’s airplane. “He hit the bottom so laborious, so many instances, touchdown within the Mojave,” Hartz sighed. “Every part got here free.” Conway denied Hartz’s account, saying the airplane merely “obtained fairly soiled” and he misplaced a window masking.
In accordance with Conway, he recruited SpaceX alum Gabriela Hobe and Fasil Mulatu Kero, Mach’s vp of producing and former Tesla worker. “Ethan has most likely paid me over 1,000,000 {dollars} to do what I do for him,” Conway stated, 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 stated 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 might lower your expenses on Ubers.
The candidate took the Porsche for his or her conferences and ended the day at Conway’s dwelling, a sprawling compound within the rich California coastal city Carmel-by-the-Sea, stuffed along with his father’s antiques and animal elements from searching expeditions. Conway hosts common dinners for candidates there (his father cooks), in addition to, in keeping with Conway, events starting from a birthday bash for Joe Lonsdale to a marriage for Sankar.
However Btaiche stated Conway’s actual superpower isn’t his stunts, however relatively his capability to speak about “candidates in a extra human manner, relatively than simply resumes and credentials.”
For Fuse hiring, Conway had Btaiche brainstorm what upbringing may create somebody who can lead a crew, or convey 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 successful candidates over, Btaiche stated that Conway sells folks on the crucial of defending America. “Should you’re engaged on one thing that’s actually mission-driven,” he stated. “I feel 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 folks that there’s truly a whole lot of journey there,” he stated.
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 corporations. “It’s simply excellent. It’s proper on the border of fanaticism,” Conway stated. “It’s develop into its personal faith.”
Fundamental character power
There’s a typical theme in how folks describe Conway: a genius, an influential participant in protection tech, and, at instances, 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 gasoline gauge and, because of this, misinterpret the gauge. “I made an assumption that was solely pilot error,” he stated. 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 finest likelihood at residing was to land on a sports activities area at a close-by faculty. “I began freaking out {that a} child was no match for a propeller,” he stated.
So he opted to land his airplane on Freeway 85, touching down in direction of oncoming site visitors in hopes that it might be safer for drivers. Miraculously, his two-seater glided onto the concrete, leaving Conway and the encircling automobiles unhurt.
Conway then warned me that I had been a hair’s breath away from an identical destiny. “If we had flown any additional, we’d’ve run out of fuel,” he stated.
That wasn’t fairly true; he advised me later that had flown the airplane a minimum of 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 fact-checking his many exaggerations), I discovered that Conway is singular in his epic storytelling expertise. That’s why he will get employed by so many wonderful corporations. And fired. After which rehired as soon as once more.
As Dorman put it, “he’s an excellent unconventional recruiter.” But, he’s additionally “higher than another recruiter.”