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 He picked up a latest Fuse rent and proceeded to regale her with tales of his outdated recruiting days. One story concerned prostitutes attending a recruiting occasion (“not for sex,” Conway clarified to TechCrunch).
The new rent was not joyful. “I thought I told it in a funny way,” Conway sighed, admitting he was being “an a–hole.”
Fuse founder JC Btaiche caught wind of the dialog and agreed, promptly firing Conway – though Btaiche informed TechCrunch that telling the prostitution story wasn’t the one inappropriate factor that Conway had carried out.
But Conway, who has turn into one of many protection tech business’s largest behind-the-scenes energy brokers, didn’t surrender on Fuse. Conway has recruited for among the buzziest protection and arduous tech companies 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 corporations, and since final 12 months, as the pinnacle 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 aircraft or gives to “go blow s— up out in the desert,” Conway mentioned. After just a few 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 business: wealthy, decided, vulnerable to telling unbelievable tales and, by all accounts, good. According to 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 crazy and genius,” Btaiche mentioned. “And I think he’s just on that line.”
As protection tech funding soared to virtually $three 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 whole community of young people in the Valley, often working jobs in the defense sector or in national security or on very ambitious, difficult things,” mentioned Gregory Dorman, a latest Princeton graduate who labored with entrepreneur and A* accomplice Kevin Hartz on his new safety startup Sauron, due to Conway’s introduction. “And they’re there because of Peterson.”
‘Does not comply’ with security laws
Conway’s signature transfer is to take candidates up in his tiny aircraft. “I like to joke that I make them sick until they accept the terms of our deals,” he mentioned.
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 aircraft is an experimental light-sport aircraft and does not comply with federal safety regulations for standard aircraft.”
A couple of minutes later, we have 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 finally moved to Afghanistan within the 70s with Conway’s mom, a Mormon college instructor. After a sequence of escapades throughout the Middle East and Africa, they moved to Carmel to lift Conway and his brother, however finally 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 right now, promoting antiques in his Carmel store.
Conway rebelled towards his father by briefly pursuing normalcy, attending Dartmouth to review…
