Yes- OPT is linked to the F1 (student) visa.
If you create a start up that employs qmericans or has VC+high value, you can change visa categories. There’s even a visa if you make a lot of money. But let’s not put the cart before the horse. 
Most international students after their college graduation can find an OPT place - it can be anything linked to your studies and if your parents subsidize you it can even be unpaid volunteering. Beyond that, you can get into a graduate program (for which you must be funded or pay for) or leave, using your degree&experience in your country (or Canada, which loves to gobble up US trained college graduates, with bonus points from Québec if they speak some French. )
But it sounds like your skills that will be enhanced by a uS education yet portable so you should be fine.
First things first: making your list.
What American students do - and this is totally okay -is write a list of all the things they did or learned through the recommender’s course; highlight units or topics they found especially fascinating; moments from the class: when they helped others and/or others helped them, when the teacher or coach changed their perspective on something… This helps the recommender, who obviosuly is free to use the examples and anecdotes you provided, or not.
Then the recommender has to explain how/why you’re the best student they’ve had this year/in 10, 25 years (obviously a young recommender would also have to pull from his/her own college and HS days, comparing you to themselves or classmates who went on to great universities or “made a name” for themselves, or may choose to skip this emtirely) It’s too easy to write “Sanjeet is the smartest student in my class. He loves Math. He’s kind and good-hearted”… if the recommender doesn’t back it up with examples, well, the value is limited. MIT has good examples of “useful” (good for adcoms) recommendations… and useless ones.
OP, this is not necessarily true. As the father of 2 international students who received a total of 6 scholarships, covering all costs up to an EFC of about 20k from various need-aware schools, I would definetely recommend applying to a few of those anyway. Need-blind Colleges are great, but everyone around the world tries to go for those 7-8 schools. It’s just a very long shot, for anyone. Generous need-aware Colleges can definetely work out for you too, do some digging, check out CDSs and GL.
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