Notes to self (Claude)
Strategy for this letter
The EB-1A “critical role” criterion requires two things: (1) the organization is “distinguished,” and (2) the beneficiary’s role within it is “leading or critical.” Stripe easily clears the first bar. For the second, we need to show Mark isn’t just filling a seat - he’s performing a role of unusual significance that directly affects the organization’s outcomes.
Key themes to emphasize
- Cross-functional “connective tissue” role - Mark’s value isn’t captured by any single job title. He spans strategy, product, engineering, and external relations in a way that very few people at Stripe do. This makes him hard to replace - you can’t hire a “Mark.”
- Trusted voice of Stripe to the outside world - He is regularly selected as a Stripe spokesperson for high-stakes external audiences: Members of the European Parliament, C-suite delegations, hackathons, founder dinners, user meetings with Fortune 500 companies. The company trusts him to speak off-script in rooms where getting it wrong would be costly.
- Founding role in Experimental Projects - He didn’t just join an existing team; he helped conceive and build EP from scratch, including pitching ideas, selecting hires, and shaping the team’s operating model. EP is now 21 people and has shipped high-visibility products.
- Strategic product contributions with measurable impact - Agentic commerce positioning, Tap-to-Pay prototype, Log-in-with-Link (kept alive when others wanted to kill it; now an important pillar for Link), User-Shareable Metrics, product suggestions that led to millions in additional interest income.
- Hiring and talent activation across Stripe - He hires across four teams (not just his own), onboards nearly every US start class (~1,900+ new hires in 2025 alone), and runs an internal speaker series. His impact on Stripe’s talent pipeline and culture goes far beyond his nominal role.
- Direct access to and trust from senior leadership - Originally reported to a team under John Collison; continues to be pulled into strategic work for the co-founders (Davos prep, annual letter input, CEO meeting prep).
Gaps / things Mark should add
- 2023 and 2024 specifics - Mark said he’d provide these. The letter currently leans on 2025 examples. Adding even a few strong 2023-2024 highlights would round out the “sustained” nature of the contributions.
- A specific quote or two from John - If John is signing this, we could include a line that sounds personally observed (“I recall when Mark…” or “I personally asked Mark to…”). Mark should check with John what resonates.
- Stripe headcount - Would be useful to say “out of approximately X,000 employees” to show that Mark is one of very few people trusted with these responsibilities. Public estimates suggest ~8,000-10,000 employees.
What I deliberately excluded
- Awesound and McKinsey contributions (those belong in a separate “contributions” claim, not this letter about critical role at Stripe).
- Excessive modesty or hedging. The letter needs to be direct and assertive. Mark can cringe later; the USCIS officer needs to see an unambiguous case.
- Technical jargon that an immigration officer wouldn’t understand.
Draft letter: Critical Role at Stripe
[To be printed on Stripe letterhead and signed by John Collison, President and Co-Founder, Stripe]
[Date]
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [Service Center Address]
Re: Petition for Alien of Extraordinary Ability (EB-1A) on behalf of Mark Moriarty
Dear Sir or Madam:
I am John Collison, President and Co-Founder of Stripe. I co-founded Stripe in 2010 with my brother Patrick Collison, who serves as Chief Executive Officer. I am writing this letter in strong support of the EB-1A petition filed on behalf of Mark Moriarty, to attest to his performance of a critical role at Stripe.
About Stripe
Stripe is one of the world’s leading financial infrastructure companies. In 2024, Stripe processed over 1.9 trillion in economic activity in 2025. More than half of the Fortune 100 use Stripe, alongside millions of businesses in over 45 countries. Stripe handles more than 500 million API requests per day and supports over 135 currencies and payment methods. The company employs approximately 10,000 people worldwide and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in Dublin, London, Singapore, Tokyo, and other major cities. Stripe is widely regarded as one of the most important technology companies built in the last two decades.
How Mr. Moriarty came to Stripe
Mr. Moriarty joined Stripe in October 2022 in a Corporate Strategy role that reported directly to me. He was recruited from a background that combined management consulting at McKinsey & Company’s Business Technology Office in London, seven years as the founder of a venture-backed audio technology startup (Awesound, a Y Combinator company), and academic training in physics and mathematics at University College Cork and the University of California, Berkeley. This combination of strategic thinking, entrepreneurial experience, and technical fluency is exceptionally rare, and it is precisely what made him valuable to Stripe from day one.
Mr. Moriarty’s critical role at Stripe
Mr. Moriarty’s role at Stripe defies a conventional job description. Over his three and a half years at the company, he has become one of a very small number of people who operate effectively across organizational boundaries - connecting strategy, product development, engineering, partnerships, communications, and talent - in ways that materially advance Stripe’s business.
I will describe the most significant dimensions of his critical role below.
1. Founding and building the Experimental Projects team
In 2023, Mr. Moriarty was instrumental in the conception of what became Stripe’s Experimental Projects (“EP”) team. He helped pitch the idea, shape the team’s mission, and select its initial hires. The team’s mandate is to rapidly validate new product opportunities for Stripe - building working prototypes and putting them in front of real users to test ideas before Stripe commits significant engineering resources.
EP has grown to a team of 21 people and has shipped several high-profile initiatives. Mr. Moriarty played a critical role in the team’s formation and continues to play a critical role in its operation, contributing to product strategy, new project identification, team culture, and cross-functional coordination. His involvement has been a decisive factor in the team’s success.
2. Direct, measurable product contributions
Mr. Moriarty has personally driven product initiatives that have had significant strategic and financial impact on Stripe:
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Agentic Commerce positioning: In 2025, as “agentic commerce” (AI agents making purchases on behalf of humans) emerged as a strategically important trend, Mr. Moriarty was central to shaping Stripe’s response. He conducted an extensive listening tour with users, wrote the primary guide used by Stripe’s sales teams at our annual Sessions conference, and led conversations with major partners including NVIDIA and Coinbase. His work directly influenced how Stripe positioned itself in a market category that is expected to reshape online commerce.
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Tap-to-Pay prototype: Mr. Moriarty independently built a working Tap-to-Pay mobile application prototype that demonstrated the feasibility of a dedicated Stripe Tap-to-Pay app. This prototype proved that Apple entitlements and product requirements were more achievable than previously assumed, and it directly accelerated Stripe’s 2026 product roadmap for this capability.
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Log-in-with-Link: When other team members proposed discontinuing an early experimental “Log in with Link” product, Mr. Moriarty argued for keeping it alive and personally maintained it. Over the course of 2025, with his continued stewardship, this feature evolved into an important strategic pillar for Stripe’s Link product. His judgment to preserve and nurture this initiative, against the prevailing view at the time, proved correct and has created significant long-term value.
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User-Shareable Metrics: Mr. Moriarty helped conceive and launch a feature allowing Stripe users to share verified business metrics publicly - an idea that originated in discussions between Mr. Moriarty and me, which he then drove to execution with his team.
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Revenue-generating product suggestions: Mr. Moriarty’s product recommendations regarding Stripe’s treasury and payout defaults led to live product changes in 2025 that resulted in millions of dollars of additional interest income for Stripe.
3. Trusted spokesperson for Stripe in high-stakes settings
One of the most distinctive aspects of Mr. Moriarty’s role is the degree to which Stripe trusts him to represent the company externally, often in settings where a misstep would carry real reputational risk. This is a responsibility typically reserved for the most senior leaders of the company. Examples include:
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Government officials: Mr. Moriarty participated in a roundtable discussion with approximately ten Members of the European Parliament visiting Stripe’s headquarters, serving as one of only three Stripe representatives. He also joined a meeting with U.S. Congresswoman Amy Klobuchar.
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C-suite delegations: He served as a speaker and panelist for a group of approximately 50 visiting Chief Executive Officers, Chief Operating Officers, and Chief Technology Officers from European companies at Stripe’s headquarters.
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Major enterprise clients: Stripe’s account teams regularly pull Mr. Moriarty into executive briefings with some of Stripe’s most important clients and prospects, including Home Depot, Apple, NVIDIA, CrowdStrike, Zoom, and many others. These are not routine sales calls; these are strategic conversations where a senior client expects a sophisticated thought partner, not a product pitch.
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Industry events: Mr. Moriarty has served as a judge or speaker at hackathons organized by Y Combinator, Replit, AGI House, and others, representing Stripe to the developer and startup communities.
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Conference preparation: He contributed to Stripe’s messaging for our annual Sessions conference, provided input for my meetings at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and helped shape Stripe’s annual letter to users.
The breadth of external contexts in which Mr. Moriarty is trusted to speak on behalf of Stripe - from parliamentarians to Fortune 500 executives to startup founders - is, to my knowledge, unmatched by any other individual at his level in the company.
4. Hiring and talent development across Stripe
Mr. Moriarty’s influence on Stripe’s talent extends well beyond his own team. In 2025 alone, he served on the hiring panel for four separate teams: Experimental Projects, Corporate Strategy, Global Partnerships, and Internal Communications. The latter two teams are organizationally unrelated to his own, but sought his judgment because of the respect he commands across the company.
Beyond hiring, Mr. Moriarty has made himself a fixture in the onboarding of nearly every new U.S.-based employee cohort. In 2025, he personally onboarded over 1,900 new Stripe employees, introducing them to the company’s culture of urgency, experimentation, and user focus. He also runs an internal speaker series, hosting prominent external guests - investors, founders, authors, and technology leaders - to foster intellectual engagement across the company. Multiple employees have cited this series as one of the most valued aspects of working at Stripe.
5. Strategic counsel to senior leadership
Throughout his tenure, Mr. Moriarty has provided strategic input on matters well beyond his formal role. He has contributed to Stripe’s response to competitive developments, advised on sensitive communications matters (including the company’s public response to Apple’s in-app payment policy changes and user reactions to product announcements), and has been consulted on corporate development opportunities evaluating potential acquisitions and partnerships. This breadth of strategic trust reflects the unusual degree to which Stripe’s leadership relies on his judgment.
Conclusion
In summary, Mr. Moriarty performs a critical role at Stripe. His contributions span product innovation, external representation, strategic counsel, and talent development in a manner that is rare for any individual at any company, let alone one person. He is not easily replaceable. The combination of strategic breadth, technical credibility, entrepreneurial instinct, and interpersonal trust that he brings to Stripe would be extraordinarily difficult to replicate through any single hire or set of hires.
Stripe’s continued competitiveness in a rapidly evolving financial technology landscape depends on people like Mr. Moriarty who can see across organizational boundaries, act on opportunities before they are obvious, and earn the trust of colleagues, leadership, and external stakeholders alike. His departure would represent a meaningful loss to the company.
I urge USCIS to approve this petition. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any additional information.
Sincerely,
John Collison President and Co-Founder Stripe, Inc.
[Claude note: This draft is ~1,500 words. Mark should review with lawyer for length preferences. Some EB-1A letters run longer with more exhibits referenced inline. Mark should also add 2023-2024 examples when ready, particularly from the Corporate Strategy period.]