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In 2023 , defense tech recruiter Peterson ConwayVIII pulled up to the office of atomic spinal fusion startup Fuse in a black Suburban , wear his signature tune cowherd chapeau . He pick up a recent Fuse hire and go to regale her with stories of his old recruiting days . One story involved prostitutes attending a recruiting consequence ( “ not for sex , ” Conway elucidate to TechCrunch ) .
The new hire was not felicitous . “ I call back I severalize it in a funny way , ” Conway sighed , admitting he was being “ an a – gob . ”
Fuse founder JC Btaiche caught hint of the conversation and agree , promptly firing Conway — although Btaiche distinguish TechCrunch that telling the prostitution story was n’t the only unfitting thing that Conway had done .
But Conway , who has become one of the DoD tech industriousness ’s biggest behind - the - scenes power broker , did n’t give up on Fuse . Conway has recruited for some of the buzziest defence mechanism and hard technical school business firm in Silicon Valley over the last decade , like Palantir and Mach Industries . He spend nearly half a decade doing recruitment for Joe Lonsdale ’s speculation firm 8VC and for its portfolio companies , and since last year , he has been the chief of talent at speculation firm A * .
So even after being usher out , Conway extend to pitch candidate to Btaiche and woo vista with flights in his private planing machine or offers to “ go blow s — up out in the desert , ” Conway said . After a few month , Fuse reinstated Conway . He has now recruited more than seven people to Fuse , include Fuse ’s chief strategy officer , Laura Thomas , a former CIA officeholder .
In many way , Conway is a stand - in for the whole industriousness : rich , determined , prone to tell unbelievable stories , and , by all account , magnificent . According to the dozen the great unwashed Trusteeship Council interview for this story , Conway is wildly successful at luring very talented people away from stable job and into startup living . “ There ’s a line between gaga and genius , ” Btaiche enounce . “ And I imagine he ’s just on that line . ”
As defense tech funding hang glide toalmost $ 3 billionlast year , Conway is ready to convince the next generation to help make new years nuclear reactors or AI - power weapon .
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“ There ’s a whole community of young the great unwashed in the Valley , often mold jobs in the defense sector or in national surety or on very challenging , difficult thing , ” said Gregory Dorman , a recent Princeton alumna who worked with enterpriser and A * spouse Kevin Hartz on his new security measure inauguration Sauron , thanks to Conway ’s introduction . “ And they ’re there because of Peterson . ”
“Does not comply” with safety regulations
Conway ’s signature move is to take campaigner up in his tiny plane . “ I like to joke that I make them sick until they take the terms of our deals , ” he said .
I first met him at an airport in San Carlos , California , soon before I climbed into his midget two - seater plane , buy with a loan fromPalantir CTOShyam Sankar . A small sign in the cockpit warned me : “ This aircraft is an experimental light - mutation aircraft and does not comply with Union prophylactic regularization for standard aircraft . ”
A few minutes later on , we were soar over the shimmering San Francisco Bay as Conway tell his fable - comparable life story . His father , Peterson Conway VII , dodged the draft , sell LSD in Tokyo , and finally moved to Afghanistan in the ’ 70 with Conway ’s mother , a Mormon school instructor . After a series of escapades across the Middle East and Africa , they move to Carmel to raise Conway and his brother , but eventually divorced .
“ My dad switch himself off there , ” Conway enounce casually as we soar over the Golden Gate Bridge . He then explain that the attempted self-annihilation was unsuccessful . His father was caught by the net and is alive and well today , selling antique in his Carmel shop .
Conway rebel against his father by concisely pursuing normalcy , attending Dartmouth to study economics . But after college , in the other 2000s , he found himself becoming a recruiter .
In Conway ’s version of result , he was riding his motorcycle around San Francisco , a cowhand in search of office space . He spotted a warehouse with a ramp , depend upon onto it , and ran directly into Hartz . At the sentence , Hartz was in the other stagecoach of progress Xoom , a fintech service for external money transfers that was eventually buy by PayPal .
Conway read Hartz asked him if he had any skills . “ None , ” Conway answer . “ But I can convey lunches . I ’m a decent author . I had an Airstream trailer — I ’m like , we can go surfing . ”
Hartz express mirth when I asked him about the story , saying , “ That is all wholly false . ” According to Hartz , Conway simply lease office space in the same edifice and that ’s how he start out recruiting for Xoom and , later , the extensive PayPal crowd .
When PayPal co - founder Peter Thiel launched Palantir in 2003 , Conway was in the right-hand place at the right time and began enrol for the firm . Conway ostensibly had no official title at the defense company , ” but was ‘ just Peterson , ’ ” like a defense technical school “ mononymous artist in the manner of Prince or Madonna , ” joked Gabe Rosen , 8VC ’s resident humanities scholar who worked with Conway at Palantir .
Palantir send Conway across the world to build up out its international teams . According to Conway , the company wanted employees with an “ internal compass and strong belief , ” people who had grapple with the values they were raised with and pave their own path .
For case , Conway take he would get missive like “ find me a Jew that married a Christian from the outback of Australia that was gay . ” Palantir had no comment .
Conway was acknowledge for get recruits ’ attention by send handwritten letter with wax seals . His method were successful , landing mass like Michael Leiter , the former music director of the National Counterterrorism Center , and many of Palantir ’s external hires .
Unconventional methods
Last summertime , Conway and his founding father fell to the Mojave desert in Hartz ’s aeroplane , take up for the affair . Like some variety of American Dynamism mirage , they go steady a gaggle of untried Isle of Man mounting a drone to the back of a truck .
It was a testing session for Mach Industries , a artillery company founded by Ethan Thornton when he was 19 class old . Mach is one of the smattering of defense and computer hardware companies that has Conway recruited for as read/write head of talent at A * . Mach has since raised over$80 millionfrom investors like Bedrock and Sequoia Capital .
While those human beings set up orangish cones and volatile equipment for their engineering science tests , Conway took multitude for trips in Hartz ’s plane . “ He hit the ground so severely , so many time , landing in the Mojave , ” Hartz sigh . “ Everything come loose . ” Conway denied Hartz ’s account , saying the plane merely “ got pretty unclean ” and he mislay a window covering .
According to Conway , he recruited SpaceX alum Gabriela Hobe and Fasil Mulatu Kero , Mach ’s vice president of manufacture and former Tesla employee . “ Ethan has in all likelihood paid me over a million dollar to do what I do for him , ” Conway say , although he later deny that figure .
It seems like everyone in the Department of Defense tech industry has an optic - popping floor about Conway . One fourth dimension , after Conway ordered an Uber and hit it off with the number one wood , he surprise a founder by setting him up with a ride and telling the founder to interview the number one wood for a job .
Another time , Fuse founder Btaiche said Conway left a Porsche with the keys in it at the airport for a recruit , who was then a government declarer , to ride when he touch down . The fellowship afterward clarify that it was a four - seater Porsche , loaned to the candidate so the caller could write money on Ubers .
The campaigner took the Porsche for their meetings and ended the mean solar day at Conway ’s home , a sprawling compound in the flush California coastal Ithiel Town Carmel - by - the - Sea , stuffed with his father ’s oldtimer and animal share from hunt military expedition . Conway hosts even dinner for candidates there ( his beginner cooks ) , as well as , accord to Conway , parties place from a birthday brawl for Joe Lonsdale to a hymeneals for Sankar .
But Btaiche said Conway ’s real superpower is n’t his stunts , but rather his power to talk about “ candidates in a more human direction , rather than just looking at résumés and credentials . ”
For Fuse hiring , Conway had Btaiche brainstorm what upbringing might create someone who can lead a team , or bring new estimate to the railroad engineer ; as a result , they ’ve scouted citizenry from rural area , citizenry who grew up as athlete , and people who are obsessed with gambling .
As for winning campaigner over , Btaiche aver that Conway sells people on the imperative mood of defending America . “ If you ’re working on something that is sincerely mission - force , ” he enunciate , “ I think Peterson can bear that story . ”
Dorman , one of the people who had the Conway Experience , was a philosophy major at Princeton debating between careers in the Valley or New York when he meet the famed recruiter . Conway persuaded him to select the Valley . “ Peterson convince masses that there ’s in reality a lot of adventure there , ” he sound out .
Conway has fashioned himself as something of a cowboy in the Valley for twelvemonth , and now the repose of technical school might have finally caught up . He applauds the current interest in American Dynamism , the full term coined by Andreessen Horowitz for government - contiguous company . “ It is just unadulterated . It is right on the border of fanaticism , ” Conway said . “ It ’s become its own religion . ”
Main character energy
There ’s a vernacular theme in how masses draw Conway : a genius , an influential player in defence tech , and , at times , a liability .
For example , a few day after I flew in his carpenter’s plane , he called me and asked , “ Did you see the news ? ”
The mean solar day before , Conway had take a 6 a.m. flying from the Carmel area to Silicon Valley . In the other morning swarthiness , Conway failed to rend out a flashlight when he was checking his fuel gauge and , as a result , misinterpret the gauge . “ I made an assumption that was entirely pilot erroneousness , ” he said . As he was flying , he recognise he did n’t have enough in the tank to make it to the dear airport .
Conway regaled the story to me in mythical proportions : a fork in his route , a choice between respectable and evilness . As he trace it , he ab initio imagine his best chance at living was to land on a sport field at a nearby school . “ I started freak out out that a tiddler was no match for a propeller , ” he said .
So he opted to land his plane on Highway 85 , impact down toward oncoming traffic in Bob Hope that it would be safer for drivers . Miraculously , his two - seater glided onto the concrete , provide Conway and the surround cars unharmed .
Conway then warn me that I had been a hair ’s largeness off from a similar fate . “ If we had flown any further , we would ’ve escape out of gas , ” he enunciate .
That was n’t quite honest ; he told me later that he had flown the plane at least one sentence after our flight of steps . But he painted our journeying together in an experiential igniter , making it unforgettable . After spending the day with him ( and a subsequent two calendar month fact - check his many exaggeration ) , I memorize that Conway is singular in his epic storytelling skill . That ’s why he gets hired by so many awesome companies . And fired . And then rehired once again .
As Dorman put it , “ He ’s a first-rate unconventional recruiter . ” Yet , he ’s also “ good than any other recruiter . ”
