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 He picked up a latest Fuse rent and proceeded to regale her with tales of his outdated recruiting days.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 comfortable. “I assumed I advised it in a humorous method,” 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 performed.
However Conway, who has develop into one of many protection tech trade’s largest behind-the-scenes energy brokers, didn’t hand over on Fuse. Conway has recruited for a number of the buzziest protection and arduous tech corporations in Silicon Valley over the past decade, like Palantir and Mach Industries. He spent practically half a decade doing recruitment for Joe Lonsdale’s enterprise agency 8VC and for its portfolio corporations, and since final 12 months, he has been the pinnacle of expertise at enterprise agency A*.
So even after being dismissed, Conway continued to pitch candidates to Btaiche and woo prospects with flights in his non-public aircraft or affords 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 individuals 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 trade: wealthy, decided, susceptible to telling unbelievable tales, and, by all accounts, good. In keeping with the dozen individuals TC interviewed for this story, Conway is wildly profitable at luring very proficient individuals away from secure jobs and into startup life. “There’s a line between loopy and genius,” Btaiche stated. “And I believe he’s simply on that line.”
As protection tech funding soared to virtually $3 billion final 12 months, Conway is able to persuade the subsequent technology to assist make new age nuclear reactors or AI-powered weapons.
“There’s a complete group of younger individuals within the Valley, typically working jobs within the protection sector or in nationwide safety or on very bold, troublesome issues,” stated Gregory Dorman, a latest Princeton graduate who labored with entrepreneur and A* companion 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 laws
Conway’s signature transfer is to take candidates up in his tiny aircraft. “I prefer 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 aircraft, 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 laws for traditional plane.”
A couple of minutes later, we have been hovering over the shimmering San Francisco Bay as Conway recounted his fable-like life story. His father, Peterson Conway VII, dodged the draft, offered LSD in Tokyo, and ultimately moved to Afghanistan within the ’70s with Conway’s mom, a Mormon faculty trainer. After a collection of escapades throughout the Center East and Africa, they moved to Carmel to lift Conway and his brother, however ultimately 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 present, promoting antiques in his Carmel store.
Conway rebelled in opposition to his father by briefly pursuing normalcy, attending Dartmouth to review economics. However after faculty, within the early 2000s, he discovered himself turning into a recruiter.
In Conway’s model of occasions, he was driving his bike 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 levels of constructing Xoom, a fintech service for worldwide cash transfers that was ultimately purchased by PayPal.
Conway stated Hartz requested him if he had any expertise. “None,” Conway answered. “However I can carry lunches. I’m a good 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 fully false.” In keeping 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 co-founder Peter Thiel launched Palantir in 2003, Conway was in the best 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 type 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 keeping with Conway, the corporate wished workers with an “inside compass and conviction,” individuals who had grappled with the values they have 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 have been profitable, touchdown individuals like Michael Leiter, the previous director of the Nationwide Counterterrorism Heart, and plenty of of Palantir’s worldwide hires.
Unconventional strategies
Final summer season, Conway and his father flew to the Mojave desert in Hartz’s aircraft, borrowed for the event. Like some form 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 likely 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 assessments, Conway took individuals for journeys in Hartz’s aircraft. “He hit the bottom so arduous, so many instances, touchdown within the Mojave,” Hartz sighed. “Every thing got here unfastened.” Conway denied Hartz’s account, saying the aircraft merely “bought fairly soiled” and he misplaced a window protecting.
In keeping with Conway, he recruited SpaceX alum Gabriela Hobe and Fasil Mulatu Kero, Mach’s vp of producing and former Tesla worker. “Ethan has in all probability paid me over 1,000,000 {dollars} to do what I do for him,” Conway stated, though he later denied that determine.
It looks as if everybody within the protection tech trade has an eye-popping story about Conway. One time, after Conway ordered an Uber and hit it off with the motive force, he shocked a founder by setting him up with a experience and telling the founder to interview the motive 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 components from searching expeditions. Conway hosts common dinners for candidates there (his father cooks), in addition to, based on 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 reasonably his skill to speak about “candidates in a extra human method, reasonably than simply résumés and credentials.”
For Fuse hiring, Conway had Btaiche brainstorm what upbringing would possibly create somebody who can lead a staff, or carry new concepts to the engineers; consequently, they’ve scouted individuals from rural areas, individuals who grew up as athletes, and people who find themselves obsessive about gaming.
As for profitable candidates over, Btaiche stated that Conway sells individuals on the crucial of defending America. “In the event you’re engaged on one thing that’s really mission-driven,” he stated, “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 folks that there’s truly a variety of journey there,” he stated.
Conway has normal 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 good. 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 individuals describe Conway: a genius, an influential participant in protection tech, and, at instances, a legal responsibility.
For example, a number of days after I flew in his aircraft, he referred to as me and requested, “Did you see the information?”
The day earlier than, Conway had taken a 6 a.m. flight from the Carmel space to Silicon Valley. Within the early morning darkness, Conway failed to drag out a flashlight when he was checking his gas gauge and, consequently, misinterpret the gauge. “I made an assumption that was fully 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 alternative between good and evil. As he described it, he initially thought his finest probability at dwelling was to land on a sports activities subject 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 aircraft on Freeway 85, touching down towards oncoming site visitors in hopes that it will 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 breadth away from an identical destiny. “If we had flown any additional, we might’ve run out of gasoline,” he stated.
That wasn’t fairly true; he advised me later that he had flown the aircraft at the least one time after our flight. However he painted our journey collectively in an existential mild, making it unforgettable. After spending the day with him (and a subsequent two months fact-checking his many exaggerations), I realized 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 every other recruiter.”
