RAEEZ LORGAT — DILIGENCE PACKET ================================ Subject: Raeez Lorgat Site: https://raeez.com Contact: raeez@momentum.inc Last updated: 2026-05-17 For a long time I kept the internet at a distance. I did not maintain a public résumé. I did not annotate my own history. I built, studied, disappeared into mathematics, and let the work live where it lived. That stopped working once I began building Mass and Momentum — institutions for ownership, governance, capital, and coordination. Institutions require provenance. This packet is part of the record. The same content is available as a Markdown file at https://raeez.com/raeez-lorgat-diligence-packet.md and as an HTML summary at https://raeez.com/diligence.html. ONE-PAGE BIOGRAPHY ------------------ Raeez Lorgat is the founder of Mass (https://mass.inc) and Momentum (https://momentum.inc). He was born in South Africa, grew up in the United Kingdom (his family left South Africa for the UK after the end of apartheid in 1994), and attended MIT in 2008-09. In 2007 he won the Computer Science Grand Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF); MIT Lincoln Laboratory named minor planet 23122 Lorgat in recognition. In 2010, he dropped out of MIT to co-found /dev/finance inc., an early developer-payments company headquartered at 701 Webster Street, Palo Alto. /dev/finance built /dev/payments — "payment processing for developers." The legal Delaware entity was registered as SlashDevSlashFinance inc. because the forward-slash character was not permitted in the corporate registry. The company was renamed Stripe in 2010 during a team renaming session at the Ramona Street office; the name "Stripe" was proposed by Greg Brockman (independently documented as Stripe's first CTO). After /dev/finance / Stripe, he spent a decade at MIT and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics working on arithmetic geometry, factorization algebras, and the geometry of quantum field theory. He also founded Persona, an art community and gallery-studio in New York City (2020-2023), and now leads Mass and Momentum. EXACT CLAIMS SUPPORTED BY THIS PACKET ------------------------------------- This packet supports the following specific claims: 1. Raeez Lorgat was a member of the early /dev/finance team from 2010, alongside Patrick Collison and John Collison. 2. /dev/finance inc. built /dev/payments, the payments API product later renamed Stripe. 3. Patrick Collison invited Raeez Lorgat to join the venture that would later be called Stripe. (Patrick's exact language.) 4. Raeez Lorgat joined Stripe in 2010, per Patrick Collison's signed statement. 5. Hemant Taneja of General Catalyst — Stripe's earliest institutional investor — described Raeez as having "dropped out to cofound Stripe with Patrick and John Collison." (Taneja's exact language.) 6. Raeez Lorgat reached out to General Catalyst for the Stripe investment, per Taneja: "It is no exaggeration that without Raeez Lorgat, General Catalyst would not have its position in Stripe today." 7. Raeez Lorgat held an executed Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement with HGSC, Inc. — one of Stripe's prior corporate names per standard corporate-records databases (PitchBook lists Stripe's prior legal names as DevPayments, HGSC, and SlashDevSlashFinance). The agreement is dated January 10, 2011 and is signed by Patrick Collison as CEO of HGSC, Inc. The PDF on this site is redacted for financial economics (share count, par value, price per share, aggregate purchase price); legal terms, signatures, dates, entity name, the Exhibit A Bill of Sale, and the Attachment A assignment of software code in the company's "devpayments" GitHub account are visible. 8. Raeez Lorgat described himself contemporaneously to MIT on September 8, 2010 as having co-founded /DEV/FINANCE INC. with Patrick Collison and John Collison. The September 8, 2010 letter from Raeez Lorgat to Arnold Henderson, Associate Dean and Director S^3 at MIT, on /DEV/FINANCE INC. letterhead, uses the exact wording: "a business venture I have co-founded with Patrick Collison (a fellow MIT undergraduate) and John Collison (a Harvard Undergraduate)" — and names Sequoia (with Mike Moritz as the representative partner), Peter Thiel, and Paul Buchheit as 2010 investors. All three are independently and publicly documented as early Stripe investors. This is the earliest contemporaneous, self-authored evidence in this packet, predating the 2022 USCIS letters by twelve years. The public memory of a company is always simpler than the company itself. Stripe's current materials identify Patrick and John Collison as the company's cofounders. This packet records the earlier /dev/finance / /dev/payments period — the company that became Stripe, before that public memory stabilized. EVIDENCE TABLE -------------- Claim 0: Raeez Lorgat contemporaneously described himself, in his own hand to MIT, as co-founder of /dev/finance with Patrick and John Collison Evidence: September 8, 2010 MIT withdrawal letter on /DEV/FINANCE INC. letterhead, addressed to Arnold Henderson, Associate Dean and Director S^3 at MIT Establishes: "a business venture I have co-founded with Patrick Collison (a fellow MIT undergraduate) and John Collison (a Harvard Undergraduate)"; names Sequoia (Mike Moritz), Peter Thiel, and Paul Buchheit as 2010 investors — all independently documented as early Stripe investors Caveat: Contemporaneous self-attestation to an institutional recipient that maintains records; written twelve years before the 2022 USCIS letters and predating Stripe's rename Claim 1: Raeez was on the /dev/finance team Evidence: 2010 /dev/finance pitch document Establishes: Team section names Patrick Collison, John Collison, and Raeez Lorgat with substantive biographies Caveat: Self-hosted historical document Claim 2: /dev/payments was the product Evidence: 2010 pitch document Establishes: Describes /dev/payments as /dev/finance inc.'s "flagship product" with ~12 early merchants Caveat: Historical naming predates Stripe brand Claim 3: Patrick invited Raeez into the venture Evidence: Patrick Collison 2022 USCIS letter (on Stripe letterhead) Establishes: "I invited him to join us in working on the then new business venture which would later come to be called Stripe"; "When he joined Stripe in 2010" Caveat: Submitted in support of a 2022 USCIS O-1 visa petition Claim 4: General Catalyst was approached by Raeez Evidence: Hemant Taneja 2022 USCIS letter (on General Catalyst letterhead) Establishes: "After he dropped out to cofound Stripe with Patrick and John Collison, he reached out to me for investment in their new company. It is no exaggeration that without Raeez Lorgat, General Catalyst would not have its position in Stripe today." Caveat: Submitted in support of a 2022 USCIS O-1 visa petition Claim 5: Public Stripe pages list Patrick and John Evidence: Stripe newsroom (stripe.com/newsroom) Establishes: Establishes why a reader may see what appears to be a public-record mismatch Caveat: Not a complete historical roster; describes current executive leadership Claim 6: Entity chain /dev/finance -> SlashDevSlashFinance -> HGSC -> Stripe Evidence: Commercial corporate-records databases (PitchBook) Establishes: Stripe's prior legal names are catalogued in standard corporate records: DevPayments, HGSC, SlashDevSlashFinance Caveat: Third-party corroboration; available via subscription Claim 7: Raeez held HGSC Inc. (Stripe predecessor) equity signed by Patrick Evidence: HGSC, Inc. Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement, January 10, 2011, signed by Patrick Collison as CEO Establishes: Raeez Lorgat held an executed Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement with HGSC, Inc., signed by Patrick Collison. Combined with Claim 6, this establishes Raeez held a Stripe-predecessor equity grant. Caveat: PDF on this site is redacted for financial economics; legal terms, signatures, dates, entity name, and the Attachment A assignment of software code in the company's "devpayments" GitHub account remain visible. Patrick's signature on this 2011 document matches his signature on the 2022 USCIS O-1 support letter. PRIMARY DOCUMENTS ----------------- Document 1 — /dev/finance inc. Original pitch document (2010) URL: https://raeez.com/devfinance-stripe-origin-pitch-document-2010.pdf HTML: https://raeez.com/devfinance-stripe-origin-pitch-document-2010.html Markdown: https://raeez.com/devfinance-stripe-origin-pitch-document-2010.md Date: 2010 Author: /dev/finance inc. team Establishes: Patrick Collison, John Collison, and Raeez Lorgat were named on the team of /dev/finance inc. in the 2010 pitch document. Each has a substantive biography. Document 2 — Patrick Collison USCIS O-1 support letter (March 7, 2022) URL: https://raeez.com/patrick-collison-uscis-o1-letter-raeez-lorgat-stripe.pdf HTML: https://raeez.com/patrick-collison-uscis-o1-letter-raeez-lorgat-stripe.html Markdown: https://raeez.com/patrick-collison-uscis-o1-letter-raeez-lorgat-stripe.md Date: March 7, 2022 Author: Patrick Collison, Co-founder and CEO of Stripe Letterhead: Stripe . 510 Townsend St. . San Francisco, CA 94103 Establishes: Patrick and Raeez met at MIT. Patrick invited Raeez to join the then-new business venture that would later be called Stripe. Raeez joined Stripe in 2010. Patrick worked very closely with Raeez. After Stripe, Raeez went on to be a research fellow at Perimeter Institute. Submitted in support of a 2022 USCIS O-1 visa petition. Document 3 — Hemant Taneja USCIS O-1 support letter (August 2, 2022) URL: https://raeez.com/hemant-taneja-uscis-o1-letter-raeez-lorgat-stripe.pdf HTML: https://raeez.com/hemant-taneja-uscis-o1-letter-raeez-lorgat-stripe.html Markdown: https://raeez.com/hemant-taneja-uscis-o1-letter-raeez-lorgat-stripe.md Date: Tuesday August 2, 2022 Author: Hemant Taneja, General Catalyst Letterhead: General Catalyst Establishes: Hemant came to know Raeez at MIT while teaching an entrepreneurship course. Raeez dropped out to cofound Stripe with Patrick and John Collison. Raeez reached out to Hemant for investment in the new company. Without Raeez, General Catalyst would not have its position in Stripe. Raeez's responsibilities included fundraising, documentation, customer/investor communication, and software. Raeez was 19 at the time. After Stripe, Raeez held research fellowships at the Perimeter Institute and Foresight Institute. Submitted in support of a 2022 USCIS O-1 visa petition. Document 5 — Raeez Lorgat MIT withdrawal letter (September 8, 2010) URL: https://raeez.com/raeez-lorgat-mit-withdrawal-letter-stripe-2010.pdf HTML: https://raeez.com/raeez-lorgat-mit-withdrawal-letter-stripe-2010.html Markdown: https://raeez.com/raeez-lorgat-mit-withdrawal-letter-stripe-2010.md Date: September 8, 2010 Author: Raeez Lorgat (signed in own hand) Recipient: Arnold Henderson, Associate Dean and Director S^3, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Letterhead: /DEV/FINANCE INC. . 701 Webster Street . Palo Alto, California, 94301 . T 617-470-5156 . raeez@devpayments.com . www.devpayments.com Establishes: Raeez Lorgat petitioned MIT for withdrawal effective the fall semester of his Junior year (MIT class of 2012), in his own signed contemporaneous words describing the venture as "a business venture I have co-founded with Patrick Collison (a fellow MIT undergraduate) and John Collison (a Harvard Undergraduate)." Names the venture as /DEV/FINANCE INC. and the first product as /DEV/PAYMENTS. Names the 2010 investor stack: Sequoia (lead, with Mike Moritz as representative partner), and angels including Peter Thiel and Paul Buchheit — all three independently and publicly documented as early Stripe investors. The letterhead address (701 Webster Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301) matches the address on the January 10, 2011 HGSC, Inc. Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement (Document 4). Why this document matters: This is the earliest contemporaneous, self-authored document on raeez.com supporting Raeez Lorgat's founding-team role at the venture that would be renamed Stripe. The other primary documents are either contemporaneous but third-party-authored (the 2010 pitch document is a team artifact), contemporaneous but corporate-instrument form (the 2011 HGSC RSPA records the equity grant), or self-authored but retrospective (the 2022 USCIS O-1 letters were written twelve years after the events they describe). The September 8, 2010 MIT letter is both contemporaneous and self-authored, on /DEV/FINANCE INC. letterhead, written to a named MIT dean at an institution that maintains records, twelve years before any audience for revisionist history existed. Document 4 — HGSC, Inc. Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement (January 10, 2011) URL: https://raeez.com/hgsc-inc-restricted-stock-purchase-agreement-raeez-lorgat-stripe.pdf Date: January 10, 2011 Counterparty: HGSC, Inc., a Delaware corporation Signatory: Patrick Collison, CEO of HGSC, Inc. Recipient: Raeez Lorgat (Purchaser) Address: 701 Webster Street, Palo Alto, CA, 94301 (same address named in the /dev/finance narrative) Establishes: Raeez Lorgat held an executed Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement with HGSC, Inc., signed by Patrick Collison. HGSC, Inc. is documented as one of Stripe's prior corporate names: standard commercial corporate-records databases — including PitchBook — list Stripe's prior legal names as DevPayments, HGSC, and SlashDevSlashFinance. The RSPA is therefore a Stripe-predecessor equity grant. Patrick Collison's signature on this 2011 agreement is visibly the same signature as on the 2022 USCIS O-1 letter (Document 2). Redactions: Financial economics redacted (share count, par value, price per share, aggregate purchase price, vesting share count). NOT redacted (visible on the PDF): entity name "HGSC, Inc.," agreement date, both signatures, Patrick's title "CEO," the Palo Alto address, the Exhibit A Bill of Sale text, the Attachment A assignment of software code in the company's "devpayments" GitHub account, and standard RSPA legal terms (Section 83(b) election, repurchase option, change-of-control acceleration, lock-up, ROFR, escrow, arbitration). NOTE ON THE PUBLIC RECORD ------------------------- The public memory of a company is always simpler than the company itself. Stripe's current materials identify Patrick and John Collison as the company's cofounders. This packet records the earlier /dev/finance / /dev/payments period — the company that became Stripe, before that public memory stabilized. - The 2022 letters from Patrick Collison and Hemant Taneja were submitted in support of a 2022 USCIS O-1 visa petition. - Patrick Collison's letter describes Raeez as having been "invited to join the venture." Patrick's letter does not use the literal word "cofounder." - Hemant Taneja's letter does use the word "cofound" explicitly. - The exact title used internally and externally — "cofounder," "founding team member," or "founding engineer" — may have varied across documents and time. The primary documents above are the authoritative record. FULL TEXT — RAEEZ LORGAT MIT WITHDRAWAL LETTER (September 8, 2010) ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Letter on /DEV/FINANCE INC. letterhead: 701 Webster Street, Palo Alto, California, 94301 . T 617-470-5156 . raeez@devpayments.com . www.devpayments.com.] September 8, 2010 Arnold Henderson Associate Dean and Director S^3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dear Arnold, I am writing to inform you that I—Raeez Lorgat, MIT class of 2012—would like to voluntarily withdraw from the institute effective starting the fall semester of my Junior year. My decision to withdraw from the institute is primarily driven by an opportunity identified in a business venture I have co-founded with Patrick Collison (a fellow MIT undergraduate) and John Collison (a Harvard Undergraduate) in the course of my undergraduate studies thus far. The venture, /DEV/FINANCE INC., has drawn high expectations both from a working satisfied customer base and the Silicon Valley venture community. All indication shows that /DEV/FINANCE INC is poised for rapid growth. /DEV/FINANCE INC is a financial services and technology company. It's first product, /DEV/PAYMENTS, focuses on changing the core concept of the traditional 'merchant account', a financial product enabling the processing of debit and credit card transactions within a given business (known as a merchant). By iterating over the traditional financial product as serviced by financial institutions today, /DEV/PAYMENTS is able to offer a modern and relevant alternative to payment processing solutions in existence today, where the focus is on servicing software developers and their products. /DEV/FINANCE INC has successfully raised rounds of funding from top-flight Silicon Valley venture capital firms, as well as a host of angel-investors. Sequoia led the last round as the largest institutional investor (with Mike Moritz as the representative partner), and notable angels include Peter Thiel (founder and CEO of PayPal, Paul Buchheit (creator of gmail at google, founder of friendfeed) and many others. My request is driven by the realization that in pursuing due diligence with /DEV/FINANCE INC, I will be unable to commit the time necessary to pursue my undergraduate studies. The decision to take time away from my undergraduate education was not an easy one to make, but after review of council from friends, family, colleagues and investors — I have reached the conclusion that the petitioned course of action is the correct choice for me to take. I have completed two years of my undergraduate education and would henceforth like to petition to take another period of up to 2 years away from the Institute, with a re-evaluation at the end of the 1st and 2nd year. The next 2 years will sufficiently give me the room to evaluate the business' full potential, after which I intend to return to the institute and resume my undergraduate education—at that point bringing with me real-world experience and education I'd be unable to obtain at this time at the Institute. Sincerely yours, [signed] Raeez Lorgat /DEV/FINANCE INC. . 701 Webster Street . Palo Alto, California, 94301 FULL TEXT — PATRICK COLLISON LETTER (March 7, 2022) ---------------------------------------------------- [Letter on Stripe corporate letterhead.] 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 FULL TEXT — HEMANT TANEJA LETTER (August 2, 2022) -------------------------------------------------- [Letter on General Catalyst letterhead.] Tuesday August 2, 2022 U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services Re: O-1 Visa Petition Dear Immigration Examiner: At General Catalyst I am an early investor in market-leading companies like Stripe, Livongo (acquired by Teladoc in an $18.5B merger, the largest in digital health history to-date), Samsara (NYSE: IOT), Snap (NYSE: SNAP), Fundbox, Grammarly, Gusto, Applied Intuition, and Anduril. I am an advocate for Responsible Innovation [...] [Three paragraphs of biographical context omitted for brevity. Full text at https://raeez.com/hemant-taneja-uscis-o1-letter-raeez-lorgat-stripe.md] I came to know Raeez Lorgat while he was still a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — at the time I was teaching a course on entrepreneurship. After he dropped out to cofound Stripe with Patrick and John Collison, he reached out to me for investment in their new company. It is no exaggeration that without Raeez Lorgat, General Catalyst would not have its position in Stripe today. As is typical of a founder of any technology company, Raeez Lorgat's responsibilities at Stripe included every responsibility imaginable: from raising funds, to writing up documentation and communicating to customers and investors, to building software. His role in founding Stripe, especially at the young age of 19 years old after having dropped out of a leading institution such as MIT, exhibits Raeez Lorgat as having risen to the very top of his field of entrepreneurship. He is unquestionably of extraordinary ability. After Stripe, Raeez Lorgat has gone on to lead a very successful career in academia, securing rare research fellowships at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, as well as Foresight Institute. This has further led him to secure an international reputation for his extraordinary achievements. This rare combination exhibits Raeez Lorgat not only as one of the top business minds working today, and one of the finest the country has produced in decades, but also as a leading researcher. It is my understanding that both of these extraordinary traits are now proving fruitful in the founding of his latest company, Persona. Raeez Lorgat's petition therefore has my unreserved support. I urge you to approve it right away. Yours truly, [signed] Hemant Taneja General Catalyst FULL TEXT — 2010 /DEV/FINANCE PITCH (TEAM SECTION) --------------------------------------------------- The pitch document's team page names three people. The full Markdown transcript including mission, product, and merchant sections is at https://raeez.com/devfinance-stripe-origin-pitch-document-2010.md. Patrick Collison — An Irish scientist, engineer, entrepreneur and alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the age of sixteen he was the winner of the 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition with the creation of Croma — a new LISP-based programming language. By age nineteen Patrick had negotiated the sale of his first company, Auctomatic (co-founded with brother, John Collison) for $5 million. John Collison — An Irish scientist, engineer and entrepreneur. At age sixteen, John co-founded Auctomatic, an eBay competitor, with his brother Patrick. John studied physics at Harvard University. Raeez Lorgat — A South African scientist, engineer and entrepreneur. He was the computer science grand award winner of the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and winner of the Eskom Expo for young scientists at the age of fifteen. At age sixteen, NASA and MIT's Lincoln Labs honored Raeez with the naming of Minor planet 23122 Lorgat. Raeez studied mathematics and computer science at MIT. CONTACT FOR VERIFICATION ------------------------ Email: raeez@momentum.inc Website: https://raeez.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raeez-lorgat/ X: https://x.com/raeez End of diligence packet.