# Patrick Collison — USCIS O-1 support letter for Raeez Lorgat

**Document type:** Letter of support for U.S. immigration petition (USCIS Form I-129, O-1 visa)
**Author:** Patrick Collison, Co-founder and CEO of Stripe, Inc.
**Date:** March 7, 2022
**Recipient:** U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
**Petitioner:** Raeez Lorgat
**Letterhead:** Stripe, Inc.
**Return address:** Stripe · 510 Townsend St. · San Francisco, CA 94103
**Original PDF:** https://raeez.com/patrick-collison-uscis-o1-letter-raeez-lorgat-stripe.pdf
**SHA-256 of PDF:** `3e9f0c4ff7ca8ff72b2b86b2a181b376263cd4d9a8159e785c176ad7f52cec2d`

## 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,
>
> Stripe · 510 Townsend St. · San Francisco, CA 94103

---

## 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.
- 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.