In 2023, defense tech recruiter Peterson Conway <\/strong>VIII pulled up to the offices of nuclear fusion startup Fuse in a black Suburban, donning his signature cowboy hat. He picked up a recent Fuse hire and proceeded to regale her with stories of his old recruiting days. One story involved prostitutes attending a recruiting event (\u201cnot for sex,\u201d Conway clarified to TechCrunch).\u00a0<\/p>\n The new hire was not happy. \u201cI thought I told it in a funny way,\u201d Conway sighed, admitting he was being \u201can a\u2013hole.\u201d <\/p>\n Fuse founder JC Btaiche caught wind of the conversation and agreed, promptly firing Conway \u2014 although Btaiche told TechCrunch that telling the prostitution story wasn\u2019t the only inappropriate thing that Conway had done.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But Conway, who has become one of the defense tech industry\u2019s biggest behind-the-scenes power brokers, didn\u2019t give up on Fuse. Conway has recruited for some of the buzziest defense and hard tech firms in Silicon Valley over the last decade, like Palantir and Mach Industries. He spent nearly half a decade doing recruitment for Joe Lonsdale\u2019s venture firm 8VC and for its portfolio companies, and since last year, he has been the head of talent at venture firm A*.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n So even after being dismissed, Conway continued to pitch candidates to Btaiche and woo prospects with flights in his private plane or offers to \u201cgo blow s\u2014 up out in the desert,\u201d Conway said. After a few months, Fuse reinstated Conway. He has now recruited more than seven people to Fuse, including Fuse\u2019s chief strategy officer, Laura Thomas, a former CIA officer.\u00a0<\/p>\n In many ways, Conway is a stand-in for the whole industry: rich, determined, prone to telling unbelievable stories, and, by all accounts, brilliant. According to the dozen people TC interviewed for this story, Conway is wildly successful at luring very talented people away from stable jobs and into startup life. \u201cThere\u2019s a line between crazy and genius,\u201d Btaiche said. \u201cAnd I think he\u2019s just on that line.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As defense tech funding soared to almost $3 billion<\/a> last year, Conway is ready to convince the next generation to help make new age nuclear reactors or AI-powered weapons.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s 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,\u201d said Gregory Dorman, a recent Princeton graduate who worked with entrepreneur and A* partner Kevin Hartz on his new security startup Sauron, thanks to Conway\u2019s introduction. \u201cAnd they\u2019re there because of Peterson.\u201d<\/p>\n Conway\u2019s signature move is to take candidates up in his tiny plane. \u201cI like to joke that I make them sick until they accept the terms of our deals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n I first met him at an airport in San Carlos, California, shortly before I climbed into his tiny two-seater plane, purchased with a loan from Palantir CTO <\/a>Shyam Sankar. A small sign in the cockpit warned me: \u201cThis aircraft is an experimental light-sport aircraft and does not comply with federal safety regulations for standard aircraft.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A few minutes later, we were soaring over the shimmering San Francisco Bay as Conway recounted his fable-like life story. His father, Peterson Conway VII, dodged the draft, sold LSD in Tokyo, and eventually moved to Afghanistan in the \u201970s with Conway\u2019s mother, a Mormon school teacher. After a series of escapades across the Middle East and Africa, they moved to Carmel to raise Conway and his brother, but eventually divorced.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad threw himself off there,\u201d Conway said nonchalantly as we soared over the Golden Gate Bridge. He then explained that the attempted suicide was unsuccessful. His father was caught by the nets and is alive and well today, selling antiques in his Carmel shop.<\/p>\n Conway rebelled against his father by briefly pursuing normalcy, attending Dartmouth to study economics. But after college, in the early 2000s, he found himself becoming a recruiter.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Conway\u2019s version of events, he was riding his motorcycle around San Francisco, a cowboy in search of office space. He spotted a warehouse with a ramp, rode onto it, and ran straight into Hartz. At the time, Hartz was in the early stages of building Xoom, a fintech service for international money transfers that was eventually bought by PayPal.<\/p>\n Conway said Hartz asked him if he had any skills. \u201cNone,\u201d Conway answered. \u201cBut I can bring lunches. I\u2019m a decent writer. I had an Airstream trailer \u2014 I\u2019m like, we can go surfing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Hartz laughed when I asked him about the story, saying, \u201cThat is all entirely false.\u201d According to Hartz, Conway simply rented office space in the same building and that\u2019s how he started recruiting for Xoom and, later, the broader PayPal crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n When PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel launched Palantir in 2003, Conway was in the right place at the right time and began recruiting for the firm. Conway apparently had no official title at the defense company, \u201dbut was \u2018just Peterson,\u2019\u201d like a defense tech \u201cmononymous artist in the style of Prince or Madonna,\u201d joked Gabe Rosen, 8VC\u2019s resident humanities scholar who worked with Conway at Palantir.<\/p>\n Palantir sent Conway across the world to build out its international teams. According to Conway, the company wanted employees with an \u201cinternal compass and conviction,\u201d people who had grappled with the values they were raised with and paved their own path.\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, Conway claimed he would get missives like \u201cfind me a Jew that married a Christian from the outback of Australia that was gay.\u201d Palantir had no comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Conway was known for getting recruits\u2019 attention by sending handwritten letters with wax seals. His methods were successful, landing people like Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and many of Palantir\u2019s international hires.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Last summer, Conway and his father flew to the Mojave desert in Hartz\u2019s plane, borrowed for the occasion. Like some kind of American Dynamism mirage, they saw a gaggle of young men mounting a drone to the back of a truck.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ET_00720.jpg?w=680\")
\u201cDoes not comply\u201d with safety regulations<\/h2>\n
Unconventional methods\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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