Transcript
March 7, 2022
US Citizenship and Immigration Services
Re: Visa Petition of Raeez Lorgat
Dear Immigration Examiner:
My name is Patrick Collison. I am co-founder and CEO of Stripe Inc., the leading payment technology provider for commerce on the internet today, and more recently co-founder of Fast Grants providing fast funding for COVID-19 science, and the Arc Institute, a new institution for curiosity-driven biomedical science and technology. I came to know Raeez Lorgat while we were both students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He displayed extraordinary insight into the future capabilities of technology, and there I invited him to join us in working on the then new business venture which would later come to be called Stripe.
Stripe embodied a variety of innovative ideas. In particular, its payment processing technology made it simple for developers to build new apps and websites, in such a way that reduces the barrier to entry for commerce to occur on the internet. This project was the first of its kind online, in America and indeed in the whole world, and as such served as the bedrock for the emergence of an entire new industry, that which is now known as fintech, a category including companies such as Robinhood, Wise, Plaid and so on. Today, Stripe has annual revenue of over 7 billion US dollars.
Having worked very closely with him, I feel well-qualified to speak to Lorgat's aptitude and abilities. Quite simply, Lorgat is an extraordinarily talented individual. When he joined Stripe in 2010, he struck me as extraordinary in his genuine curiosity, his energy, and commitment to learning, be it an engineering, scientific or business capacities. His exceptionally broad knowledge and wide range of curiosity make him just as capable as any of the top business minds working in the American technology industry today. I understand that, after Stripe, Lorgat went on to establish himself as a frontier researcher in theoretical physics, where he was invited to be a research fellow at the highly selective Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. It is almost unheard of for an individual to possess such broad-ranging aptitude and this accomplishment speaks to the depth and range of Lorgat's unique abilities.
This letter is to express emphatic support for Lorgat's U.S. immigration petition. I have long recognized the importance in, and both participated and contributed toward the growth of the American technology industry, and my position in the industry has given me the great fortune of coming into close contact with many brilliant and original minds. Lorgat unquestionably ranks very highly among them. It is imperative that these great minds be put to use in the American technology industry, so that they may feed into the global technology industry and economy as a whole.
Please feel welcome to contact me with any questions you may have.
Yours Sincerely,
[signed]
Patrick Collison,
CEO Stripe,
Claims supported by this document
- Patrick Collison and Raeez Lorgat met while both were students at MIT.
- Patrick Collison invited Raeez Lorgat to join the early business venture that would later come to be called Stripe.
- Patrick worked very closely with Raeez during this period.
- Raeez joined Stripe in 2010 (Patrick's exact wording: "When he joined Stripe in 2010").
- After Stripe, Raeez went on to be a research fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
- The letter is on Stripe corporate letterhead at 510 Townsend St., San Francisco, CA 94103, signed by Patrick Collison as CEO of Stripe, and dated March 7, 2022.
- The letter is submitted under penalty of perjury as evidence in support of Raeez Lorgat's O-1 visa petition before USCIS.
Caveats
- Patrick's letter describes Raeez as having been invited to join the venture. It does not use the literal word "cofounder."
- This is an immigration support letter, not a Stripe corporate document or press release. Stripe's current public leadership pages list Patrick Collison and John Collison as Stripe's public cofounders. This letter establishes Raeez Lorgat's early founding-team involvement, not his current standing on Stripe's executive leadership roster.