I think there's a lot of confusion and misinformation about Zhilin's visa, H1B lottery, immigration, and why he left the U.S. Zhilin had many opportunities to stay in the U.S. if he wanted to. In fact, I was on an email thread with a senior Apple exec (Tim Cook's reports) asking whether Zhilin would consider joining Apple. I said that he wanted to go back to his homeland. The response was, well, we have an office in Beijing if he'd like to join there. But Zhilin was quite determined to go back and build a startup. I remember him telling me that if he didn't at least try starting his own company, he would regret it for the rest of his life. I respect that, and he was right. Many of my international PhD students do choose to stay in the U.S. Of course the U.S. immigration process can be quite intimidating and uncertain, even for superstar PhD graduates from places like CMU.