Criterion: “Evidence of your performance of a leading or critical role in distinguished organizations”.

Last edited	Status
March 18, 2026	70% done.

We mention three jobs:

Stripe - 60% done
- Proof Mark was critical: long list of critical involvements, with arguments supported by a letter signed by Stripe co-founder John Collison.
- Proof Stripe is a “distinguished organization”: This should be easy (mainly leaving this for Fragomen).
McKinsey - 100% done
- Proof Mark was critical: Mark has nothing more to give Fragomen. The 2022 letter from Tunde Olanrewaju was perfect.
- Proof McKinsey is a “distinguished organization”: This should be easy (leaving this for Fragomen).
Awesound - 100% done
- Proof Mark was critical: As the sole founder, it should be obvious this role was “critical”. The company was created by Mark, and wouldn’t exist otherwise. Proving I had a critical role should be easy.
- Proof Awesound is a “distinguished organization”: this is not so easy, since it’s a small startup most people never heard of. We should lean on cross-references to winning IBYE competition, to being funded by Parallel18 and being funded by YCombinator (inferring ~all YC portfolio companies are distinguished?)

Evidence for Critical Role claim

1. Stripe: in progress (next action: Mark)

Intro

In October 2022, Mark joined Corporate Strategy, a team which reported directly to me. Since then he has ascended in influence and impact, and become a critical member of the firm. Stripe was glad to support his O-1 application in 2022, and we are glad to support his EB-1 application today.
Some types of companies have a finite need for staff. For example, a hotel has only so many rooms, and therefore only so many cleaners are required. A restaurant needs only a finite number of chefs and wait staff to serve the patrons. Stripe is not like this. There’s not an objectively “correct” number of employees Stripe should have, nor “correct” number of projects we should attempt to pursue. We’re limited by our imagination, our ability to identify good ideas, and our ability to successfully execute on these ideas. Mark’s presence is net additive for Stripe. Projects he has spawned have led to additional US-based jobs.

Theme: Advise leadership and product teams on matters of Corporate Strategy

Theme: Critical meetings with users (related: external comms)

Theme: Represent Stripe in person and provide editorial input for our public comms (related to: meetings with users)

Judge of others

Judged two hackathons internally
Hired for LiwL
repet: Hired for four teams, including EP

Theme: (internal-1) cross-functional coordination, “joined up thinking”

Principal author “Strategy Bites” newsletter during 2024
Global Partnerships, including important strategic partnerships — across tech companies (like Apple and Meta), banks, card networks (like Visa and MasterCard), major crypto companies, and payment methods (like Klarna and Cash App Pay).
- Apple: Mark was one of the only people outside of “Global Partnerships” read into highly confidential product plans Apple shared with Stripe.
ChatGPT commerce, also confidential
Connective tissue across Dashboard, Mobile, Stripe Apps, Ecosystem.
Gave “CorpStrat” sessions at other team onsites.

Theme: (internal-2) Foster a culture of innovation and experimentation across Stripe

Creator of first prototype of a new offering called “Log in with Link” (see loginwithlink.com, and screenshot in Appendix), a project that has since gone live. I worked with Clerk to show off Log in with Link on a shopify site: Clerk <> Shopify <> Link demo (password: clerk).
(2023) Co-organised and hosted the “GPT hackathon”. Mark created the rules for the hackathon, solicited participants (over 100 builders, over 300 total participants), created the template for teams’ presentations, was emcee on the final day for teams presenting their work. (In the months that followed: The “one slide per hackathon” idea has worked well in many hackathons over the past several months. Fork the above deck above, or any similar deck (like Terminal onsite Hackathon slides).)
Stripe labs - starter ideas Wrote a long list of possible new ideas for Stripe. This was a fast-twitch action based on a ping from Maia and Patrick. This doc wasn’t socialised widely; I directly ping’d a few people to share specific ideas, and I think there are some other ideas in the doc that will be looked at again in future.
Mark wrote documents that preceded internal changes. Mark was early identifying “Generative A.I. and GPT opportunities for Stripe”, writing a document on the subject in late 2022, advancing and collating thoughts on this (at the time nascent) opportunity. He shared concrete proposals for staffing AI efforts with his “GenAI dandelion investments” document in January 2023. The model Mark proposed was roughly followed, with first the launch of teams we called “ML accelerators”.

Theme: (internal-3) empower others in Stripe

Onboarding: spoke to ~every start class (including over 1,900 Stripes in 2025). Worked with onboarding team to revamp content for new hires (across the week).
High-leverage guides for others. In 2024, he prepared an AI briefing doc for our CRO and others attending Davos;
in 2025 he wrote the “Agentic commerce: Sessions talk track” guide, for all our Acocunt Executives who’d be attending our annual conference (“Stripe Sessions”).
Mark helped update our reusable talking slides for meetings in our Executive Briefing Center
Mark has helped our Developer Productivity and “Leverage” teams test internal productivity/AI tools before rolling out to the rest of the org. Mark was one of the first beta testers for coding program “Cursor”, and has run workshops educating Stripes on to safely use A.I. tools to increase their own productivity.

Theme: (internal-4) Build community and steer internal communications

Mark was “DRI” (directly responsible individual) for an internal speaker series we called “Twilight”. As DRI (directly responsible individual), comprising a few short internal demos and one external guest of honor. Mark picked the internal demos, nominated and then confirmed the external speaker, liaised with workplace to get food/drink, rehearsed with presenters and AV, designed and printed the posters).
Member of “Oyster Point Site Team”. Oyster Point Site Team: helped plan other activities like regular “Snacks and Stripes”, OP stairs race, Thanksgiving dinner,
Internal comms around delicate matters like RTO and various activities related to RTO. Others look to Mark as an influencial voice within Stripe. He is what we call a “culture carrier”. He helps others uphold Stripe principles, by setting the pace and energy.
Strategy Bites speaker series (example 𝕏 post in Appendix).
- Mr Moriarty runs an internal speaker series, where he interviews guests live on Zoom. Interviews are attended live by 100+ Stripe employees via Zoom, with many more catching the replay (shared only internally to Stripe employees). Mr Moriarty is a prominent public face of Stripe, liasing with prominent fintech writers (like Matt Brown, Simon Taylor, Jevgenijs), entrepreneurs (like Eric Glyman, co-founder of Ramp, now worth $32 billion), investors, and more.
- Hosted “tech talks” with external speakers. I sourced, invited and recorded live talks with several speakers in 2025. The goal of these talks (and Patrick’s speaker series) is to help Stripes feel that Stripe is an elite place to work, where they’re exposed to great ideas (a bit like a university) and get access to smart people. Feedback from employees includes “one of the best perks at Stripe”. In 2025 I hosted the following guests via Zoom (recordings in strategy-bites slack channel and go/sbevents): Ara Kharazian (Ramp Econ Lab); Pablo Moncada is a co-founder of MoonDAO (co-hosted with Privy); Cristina Cordova joined Stripe in 2012, now is COO at Linear; Alex Komoroske is the co-founder common.tools and former Head of Corp Strat at Stripe; Jason Mikula is the publisher of Fintech Business Weekly; Sheel Mohnot is a fintech seed investor, co-founder, and general partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures; Tanay Jaipuria is an AI-focused investor at Wing; Marc Hijink, author of Focus — The ASML Way (one of John’s favorite books of 2025).
Each year, Mark co-hosts the annual talent show along with one of our other most-tenured Stripes, who has been with the company for 11 years. In fact, since joining Stripe, Mark has consistently wound up doing things typically only done by folks with manay more years tenure or a member of the C-suite (such as co-hosting an all-hands meeting with our CEO).
This is particularly important to Stripe because ………

Theme: Hiring

As mentioned in Claim F, “Judge of peers”, Mr Moriarty has been on the hiring panel for four teams in the past year:

Experimental projects (growing the team from inception to a headcount of 17 today)
Corporate Strategy (hiring five new hires since joining Stripe in 2022)
Internal Communications
Partnerships The latter two teams leaned on Mr Moriarty for guidance because his influence transcends his role.

Theme: built prototypes and got new projects going

Mark has had a critical role in some of our most important projects, including (but not limited to):

Above: screenshot from awesound.com/login. Note the “Log in with Link” option. This was a project that Mr Moriarty conceived from scratch, built the first prototype of (loginwithlink.com), and Awesound was one of the first websites to adopt this login option. Above: screenshot of what the user sees after clicking “Log in with Link” on any website that’s using this Log in method.

CorpDev: Our Corporate Development team regularly rely on Mark to (i) identify possible acquisition targets and (ii) help them decide whether a target company is worth of investment or acquiring. For example, his auth demo (loginwithlink.com) and input was critical in Stripe’s decision to invest in an authentication startup, Clerk. Corporate Development team regularly relies on to provide fast, early input on a potential acquisition opportunity.

Miscellaneous

.stripe gTLD domain working group: provided input for submission to ICANN.

2: McKinsey: done

I don’t think we can do better than Tunde’s letter, so let’s just emphasis extracts from that.

3: Awesound: done

Mark’s role as “critical” should be obvious from the fact that I’m a founder. For evidence that Awesound is distinguished:

Cross-reference YCombinator investment (discussed in Claim C, membership of orgs, and Claim E, Prizes and Awards), winning funding from the YCombinator, the most prestigious invesetor in the startup ecosystem in America.
Cross-reference Parallel18 investment (discussed in Claim E, Prizes and Awards) - distinguished with the honor of being invited to work from Puerto Rico because the government of Puerto Rico determined Awesound was distinguished enough that the goverment of Puerto Rico would benefit from Mr Moriarty’s presence on the island.
Cross-reference IBYE (discussed in Claim E, Prizes and Awards), winning a national award in Ireland and being honored by politicians, held up as a leading example of a promising startup.
Cross-reference letters from two Awesound users (discussed in Claim D, Contributions) Gregg Clunis and Kelly-Anne Slatton.

Appendix for Claim A - Critical Role

Stripe

Stripe rep at dinners

Mr Moriarty is often the designated Stripe spokesperson at key meetups with industry players. Here are some LinkedIn posts (from other people) in the past few months, tagging him as the sole Stripe rep, or one of a small number of senior Stripe spokespeople.

Agentic Commerce roundtable, Feburary 2026:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7427772692457664512/

Stripe spokesperson at events in Stripe HQ

Example: Speaker in the Atrium for a group of ~50 visiting CXOs (that’s CEOs, COOs, CTOs, etc) from Europe. LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joostvandermersch_stripe-ai-payments-activity-7374772066618867712-S-VA

Another example: One of three Stripe spokespersons and panelist for a roundtable discussion with ~10 Members of the European Parliament.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sandrell-sultana-0a255221_it-was-an-honour-to-host-a-delegation-activity-7356991077704167424-W4m2

Speaker series by Zoom

As mentioned, Mark is the sole host of a speaker series which has invited top guests from across the industry. Screenshot of 𝕏 post: https://x.com/MbyM/status/1851864910701236337

Stripe is a distinguished organisation

Small companies often grow fast; larger companies tend to grow more slowly. It’s rare for a company to grow this fast, when revenue is already large. Stripe is the only known company in the world where the following is true: greater than $30 bi ll i o ninann u a l re v e n u e, f reec a s h f l o wp os i t i v e, an d e x p ec t e d t o d o u b l ere v e n u e b y 2028.! [[s t r i p e i s 1 o f 1. p n g]] I n v es t or s^{'} e n t h u s ia s m re f l ec t s t h es t e ll a r p a t h St r i p e i so n; s in ce t h eor i g ina lEB - 1 a ppl i c a t i o nin Dece mb er 2025, St r i p e^{'} s v a l u a t i o nha s a l re a d y in cre a se d b yo v er 50$ 159 billion dollars. As one of the preeminent firms in Silicon Valley, Stripe attracts the best talent. Fewer than 1% of job applicants wind up hired by Stripe. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/24/stripe-value-stock-sale-tender-offer.html

Mark Moriarty — EB-1A

Explorer

Claim A. Critical Role