Bob Lee, who created Cash App as chief technology officer at Square, was identified as the 43-year-old man who was killed in Downtown San Francisco early Tuesday morning. The founder of MobileCoin, where Lee worked most recently as chief product officer, confirmed Lee’s death in a statement posted online.
San Francisco police said the tech executive died after being stabbed Tuesday morning in the Rincon Hill neighborhood on the city’s northeast edge, an area that fronts the bay and is filled with high-rise condominiums. The department said it responded to a report of a stabbing at 2:35 a.m. on the 400 block of Main Street at Harrison and found a man from Mill Valley with apparent stab wounds. Officers offered medical aid, and first responders rushed to the scene to provide additional assistance. Lee was taken to a local hospital, where he died.
Lee had a long history as a software engineer, investor and executive at Silicon Valley tech companies. He concentrated on the core library development of the Android product as a software engineer at Google and was the first chief technology officer of Square, the mobile payments tech company based in San Francisco that is now called Block. His LinkedIn page says that he invested in many companies, including Asha, Clubhouse, Faire, Figma, Nana, SpaceX and Tile.
“Bob was made for the new world,” MobileCoin founder Joshua Goldbard wrote in his statement. “He was the quintessential creator, leader, and consummate hacker.”
Lee stepped into the role of chief product officer at MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency startup, in 2021. He also launched a crypto wallet called Moby.
Goldbard referred to Lee as “Crazy Bob” in his statement and said it was a nickname that came from his days playing water polo.
“I will never forget Bob,” Goldbard wrote on Twitter. “There will never be anyone quite like him. As a lifelong Bay Area resident I have more questions than answers tonight. I don’t know how to fix what’s wrong, but I know something isn’t working in our grey city.”
Many in the tech world expressed shocked and grief over Lee’s death. Figma CEO Dylan Field shared in a tweet that he first met Lee back in 2006. “He didn’t care that I was only 14 and we talked tech / geeked out about programming,” Field wrote. “We remained connected over the years and he was an early supporter of Figma. It’s so hard to believe he is gone.”
Ryan Gilbert, the founder of Launchpad Capital, called Lee “one of a kind.”
Lee’s father, Rick Lee, posted a heartfelt Facebook message about his son Wednesday, saying that he had lost his best friend. Rick said he moved to Mill Valley with his son in 2019 after the death of his wife. The father and son relocated to Miami in October 2022, Rick said.
“Life has been an adventure with two bachelors living together, and I’m so happy that we were able to become so close these last years,” Lee’s father wrote. “Bob would give you the shirt off his back. He would never look down on anyone and adhered to a strict no-judgment philosophy.”
Lee’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, said in a separate post, “He really was the best of us. I was so fortunate to grow up with him, and I feel like I’ve lost part of myself.”
The San Francisco Police Department said that no arrests have been made. The department is asking anyone with information about the stabbing to call the department at 415-575-4444.
The police department reported 56 homicides in both 2022 and 2021, up from 48 in 2020. Since the start of 2023, there have been 12 homicides in San Francisco, according to preliminary police data. At this time last year, there had been 10.
This developing news story has been updated.
