# Raeez Lorgat — MIT withdrawal letter (September 8, 2010) **Document type:** Letter of withdrawal / petition for a leave of absence from Massachusetts Institute of Technology **Author:** Raeez Lorgat **Date:** September 8, 2010 **Recipient:** Arnold Henderson, Associate Dean and Director S³, 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 **Original PDF:** https://raeez.com/raeez-lorgat-mit-withdrawal-letter-stripe-2010.pdf ## Transcript --- > September 8, 2010 > > Arnold Henderson > > Associate Dean and Director S³ > > 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 --- ## Claims supported by this document - Raeez Lorgat was MIT class of 2012, having completed two years of undergraduate education by September 2010. - On September 8, 2010, Raeez Lorgat petitioned MIT (via Arnold Henderson, Associate Dean and Director of MIT's Office of Student Support Services, "S³") to withdraw from MIT effective the fall semester of his Junior year, in order to commit time to a business venture. - The letter, in Raeez Lorgat's own contemporaneous words, describes the venture as **"a business venture I have co-founded with Patrick Collison (a fellow MIT undergraduate) and John Collison (a Harvard Undergraduate)."** This contemporaneous self-attestation predates by twelve years the 2022 Patrick Collison and Hemant Taneja USCIS O-1 letters on this site. - The venture is named in the letter as **/DEV/FINANCE INC.**; its first product is named as **/DEV/PAYMENTS**, described as "payment processing solutions" focused on "servicing software developers." - The 2010 investor stack is identified by Raeez Lorgat in writing to MIT: **Sequoia** as lead institutional investor (with **Mike Moritz** as the representative partner), and angels including **Peter Thiel** (described as founder and CEO of PayPal) and **Paul Buchheit** (described as creator of gmail at Google and founder of FriendFeed). All three are independently and publicly documented as early Stripe investors. - The letterhead names **/DEV/FINANCE INC. · 701 Webster Street · Palo Alto, California, 94301** with the email `raeez@devpayments.com` and the web address `www.devpayments.com`. The same Palo Alto address appears on the January 10, 2011 HGSC, Inc. Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement separately published on this site. - The letter is signed by Raeez Lorgat. The signature visibly matches the signature on the Raeez-side of the 2011 HGSC, Inc. Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement. - The letter is addressed to a named institutional officer (Arnold Henderson, Associate Dean and Director, MIT S³) at a named institution (MIT) that maintains its own record of receipt; the document is therefore independently verifiable through MIT's records system. ## Why this document matters This is the **earliest contemporaneous self-authored document** on the site supporting Raeez Lorgat's founding-team role at the venture that became Stripe. The other primary documents on raeez.com are either: - contemporaneous but third-party-authored (the 2010 /dev/finance pitch document, which is a team marketing artifact), or - contemporaneous but corporate-instrument-form (the January 10, 2011 HGSC, Inc. Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement, which describes the legal instrument rather than the venture history), or - self-authored but retrospective (the 2022 USCIS O-1 support letters from Patrick Collison and Hemant Taneja, written twelve years after the events they describe). This September 8, 2010 letter is **both contemporaneous and self-authored**, written in Raeez Lorgat's own hand to an institutional recipient that keeps records, twelve years before any audience for revisionist history existed. It is the single hardest document in the set to retroactively re-author. ## Caveats - The letter uses Raeez Lorgat's own characterization ("a business venture I have co-founded with Patrick Collison and John Collison"). Stripe's current public newsroom and leadership pages list Patrick Collison (Co-founder and CEO) and John Collison (Co-founder and President). This is correct and not in dispute. This document concerns the earlier /dev/finance / Stripe founding history and how Raeez Lorgat described his role contemporaneously to MIT in 2010, not Stripe's current public executive leadership roster. - The letter petitions a two-year leave with re-evaluation, after which Raeez Lorgat stated an intent to return to MIT. In fact, after /dev/finance / Stripe, Raeez Lorgat went on to research at MIT and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics rather than completing an undergraduate degree at MIT. - The letter contains minor typographical features preserved verbatim in the transcript above: "It's first product" (where standard usage would be "Its"); an unclosed parenthesis after "PayPal" before the next angel-investor clause; "council" where "counsel" is the intended word. These are features of the September 8, 2010 source document and do not affect the substance of what it establishes.