In 2023, protection know-how recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled as much as the places of work of nuclear fusion startup Fuse in a black Suburban and placed on his trademark cowboy hat. He picked up a current Fuse worker and proceeded to inform her tales from his outdated days as a recruiter. One story concerned prostitutes attending a recruiting occasion (“not for intercourse,” Conway clarified to TechCrunch).
The brand new worker was not blissful. “I assumed I mentioned it in a humorous means,” Conway sighed, admitting that he was being “a jerk.”
Fuse founder JC Btaiche heard concerning the dialog and agreed, rapidly firing Conway, though Btaiche instructed TechCrunch that telling the prostitution story wasn’t the one inappropriate factor Conway had achieved.
However Conway, who has turn into one of many protection know-how trade’s largest behind-the-scenes energy brokers, did not surrender on Fuse. Conway has recruited for a few of Silicon Valley’s hottest hard-tech and protection firms over the previous decade, together with Palantir and Mach Industries. He spent nearly half a decade recruiting for Joe Lonsdale’s enterprise agency 8VC and its portfolio firms, and since final yr has been head of expertise on the A* enterprise agency.
So even after he was fired, Conway continued to pitch Btaiche candidates and woo prospects with flights on his personal jet or affords to “go blow up within the desert,” Conway mentioned. 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 whole trade: wealthy, decided, liable to telling unbelievable tales and, by all indications, good. In keeping with the dozen individuals TC interviewed for this story, Conway is extraordinarily profitable at attracting extremely gifted individuals from secure jobs to startup life. “There’s a line between insanity and genius,” Btaiche mentioned. “And I believe it is proper alongside these traces.”
As protection know-how funding skyrocketed nearly 3 billion {dollars} Final yr, Conway is able to persuade the subsequent technology to assist make new-age nuclear reactors or weapons powered by synthetic intelligence.
“There’s a complete group of younger individuals within the Valley, usually working in protection or nationwide safety or very formidable and tough issues,” mentioned Gregory Dorman, a current Princeton graduate who labored with businessman and companion A *Kevin Hartz. about his new safety startup Sauron, because of Conway’s presentation. “They usually’re there due to Peterson.”
“Doesn’t comply” with security requirements
Conway’s major measure is to fly candidates on his tiny aircraft. “I prefer to joke that I make them sick till they settle for the phrases of our agreements,” he mentioned.
I met him for the primary time at an airport in San Carlos, California, shortly earlier than boarding his tiny two-seater aircraft, bought with a mortgage from Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar. A small signal within the cockpit warned me: “This airplane is an experimental gentle sport airplane and doesn’t meet federal security requirements for normal airplanes.”
A couple of minutes later, we have been flying over the glowing San Francisco Bay as Conway instructed the fable-like story of his life. His father, Peterson Conway VII, prevented the draft, offered LSD in Tokyo and ultimately moved to Afghanistan within the Seventies with Conway’s mom, a Mormon schoolteacher. After a sequence of escapades by way of the Center East and Africa, they moved to Carmel to lift Conway and her brother, however ultimately divorced.
“My dad went down there,” Conway mentioned nonchalantly as we flew over the Golden Gate Bridge. He then defined that the suicide try was unsuccessful. His father fell into the nets and in the present day he’s alive and nicely, promoting antiques in his Carmel retailer.
Conway rebelled towards his father and briefly sought normalcy, attending Dartmouth to review economics. However after school, within the early 2000s, he turned a recruiter.
In Conway’s model of occasions, he was using his bike round San Francisco, a cowboy looking for workplace area. He noticed a warehouse with a ramp, climbed onto it, and ran straight towards 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 expertise. “None,” Conway responded. “However I can convey lunches. I am an honest author. I had an Airstream trailer. I assumed we may go online.”
Hartz laughed after I requested him concerning the story and mentioned, “That is all utterly false.” In keeping with Hartz, Conway merely rented workplace area in the identical constructing and that is how he started recruiting for Xoom and, later, the broader PayPal group.
When PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel launched Palantir in 2003, Conway was in the proper place on the proper time and commenced recruiting for the corporate. Conway apparently had no official title on the protection firm, “however he was ‘simply Peterson,'” like a “mononymous protection know-how artist a la Prince or Madonna,” joked Gabe Rosen, 8VC’s resident humanities scholar. who labored with Conway at Palantir. .
Palantir despatched Conway around the globe to construct its worldwide groups. In keeping with Conway, the corporate needed staff with “an internal compass and conviction,” individuals who had wrestled with the values they have been raised with and paved their very own path.
For instance, Conway claimed she would obtain missives resembling “discover me a Jew who married a Christian from outback Australia who’s homosexual.” Palantir had no remark.
Conway was recognized for getting the eye of recruits by sending them handwritten letters with wax seals. Their strategies have been profitable, touchdown individuals like Michael Leiter, former director of the Nationwide Counterterrorism Middle, 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 aircraft, borrowed for the event. Like a sort of mirage of American dynamism, they noticed a gaggle of younger individuals using a drone on 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 few protection and {hardware} firms that has employed Conway as head of expertise at A*. Since then, Mach has elevated greater than $80 million from buyers resembling Bedrock and Sequoia Capital.
Whereas these males have been establishing orange cones and explosive gear for his or her engineering checks, Conway was taking individuals on Hartz’s aircraft. “He hit the bottom so laborious, so many occasions, touchdown in Mojave,” Hartz sighed. “The whole lot got here unfastened.” Conway denied Hartz’s account and mentioned the aircraft merely “received fairly soiled” and 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 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 know-how trade has a tremendous story about Conway. As soon as, after Conway ordered an Uber and hit it off with the driving force, he stunned a founder by providing him a trip and telling him to interview the driving force for a job.
On one other event, 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 landed. The corporate later clarified that it was a four-seater Porsche, loaned to the candidate in order that the corporate may get monetary savings on Ubers.
The candidate took the Porsche to his conferences and ended the day at Conway’s dwelling, a sprawling compound within the rich California coastal city of Carmel-by-the-Sea, crammed together with his father’s antiques and animal components from looking expeditions. . Conway hosts common dinners there for the candidates (her father cooks) and, in keeping with Conway, events starting from a party for Joe Lonsdale to a marriage for Sankar.
However Btaiche mentioned Conway’s actual superpower is not her tips, however her capacity to speak about “candidates in a extra human means, relatively than simply resumes and credentials.”
In hiring Fuse, Conway requested Btaiche to consider what schooling may create somebody who can lead a group or convey new concepts to engineers; Because of this, they’ve explored individuals from rural areas, individuals who grew up as athletes, and folks obsessive about gaming.
As for profitable candidates, Btaiche mentioned Conway sells individuals on the crucial of defending America. “When you’re engaged on one thing that is really mission-driven,” he mentioned, “I believe Peterson can ship that story.”
Dorman, one of many individuals who had the Conway Expertise, was learning philosophy at Princeton and torn between careers within the Valley or New York when he met the well-known recruiter. Conway satisfied him to decide on the Valley. “Peterson convinces those that there are literally plenty of adventures there,” he mentioned.
Conway has offered himself as one thing of a cowboy within the Valley for years, and now the remainder of know-how might have lastly caught up. He applauds the present curiosity in American dynamism, the time period coined by Andreessen Horowitz for government-adjacent companies. “It is simply good. It is proper on the border of bigotry,” Conway mentioned. “It has turn into its personal faith.”
Power of the primary character.
There’s a frequent theme in the way in which individuals describe Conway: a genius, an influential participant in protection know-how and, at occasions, a legal responsibility.
For instance, a number of days after flying on 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 didn’t take out a flashlight when he was checking the gasoline gauge and, in consequence, misinterpret the gauge. “I assumed it was fully pilot error,” he mentioned. Whereas flying, he realized he did not have sufficient within the tank to get to the closest airport.
Conway instructed the story to me in legendary proportions: a fork within the street, a selection between good and evil. As he described it, he initially thought his greatest likelihood at life was to land on a sports activities area at a close-by college. “I began to get scared as a result of a baby was no match for a propeller,” he mentioned.
So he opted to land his aircraft on Freeway 85, touchdown into oncoming visitors within the hopes that it will be safer for drivers. Miraculously, their two-seater slid on the cement, leaving Conway and the encircling vehicles unhurt.
Conway then warned me that I had been a hair’s breadth away from struggling an analogous destiny. “If we had flown any additional, we might have run out of gasoline,” he mentioned.
That wasn’t fully true; He later instructed me that he had flown the aircraft a minimum of as soon as after our flight. However it painted our journey collectively in an existential gentle, making it unforgettable. After spending the day with him (and the subsequent two months fact-checking his many exaggerations), I found that Conway is singular in his epic storytelling expertise. That is why so many wonderful firms rent him. And fired. After which they employed him once more.
As Dorman mentioned, “He is a really unconventional recruiter.” Nonetheless, he’s additionally “higher than some other recruiter.”
