Bob Lee, a tech executive who founded mobile payments company Cash App and previously worked at Square, died Tuesday after being stabbed near downtown San Francisco, according to his family and police.
The San Francisco Police Department said officers responded to a report of a stabbing around 2:35 a.m. Tuesday. Officers found Robert Lee, 43, with apparent stab wounds. He was taken to a hospital and succumbed to his injuries, police said.
Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement Wednesday night that the investigation was at an early stage and he called it a “horrific crime.”
The incident is being investigated by the police department’s homicide squad, the department said.
Lee had worked as Chief Product Officer at cryptocurrency company MobileCoin. He was previously Chief Technology Officer at Square (now known as Block), a financial technology startup co-founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Lee went on to create Cash App, a money transfer service.
“Bobby worked harder than anyone and was the smartest person I’ve ever known. He will be missed by all who knew him,” his father Richard Lee said in a Facebook post, which was accompanied by a news article about the stabbing. “Thank you to those who have reached out in support.”
The father and son have lived in Miami since October after moving from California, Richard Lee said in the Post. They had become particularly close following the death of Bob Lee’s mother in 2019. It wasn’t immediately clear why Lee was back in the Bay Area.
“I am so sad and discouraged to lose my brother,” Tim Oliver Lee wrote on Facebook. “He really was the best of us. I was very fortunate to grow up with him and I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself.”
In a statement Wednesday, Joshua Goldbard, MobileCoin’s founder and CEO, said that Bob Lee “passed away yesterday” and praised his business acumen. He did not state Lee’s cause of death.
“Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature. Bob was the real article,” Goldbard said. “He was created for the world that is being born, he was a child of dreams and whatever he imagined, no matter how crazy, he made come true.”
Goldbard said in a Twitter thread that Lee was “like a brother to me,” and he praised Lee as a “brilliant” visionary with a “kaleidoscopic” mind.
The World Health Organization confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday that Lee has offered his “support and expertise” during the pandemic, saying in a statement that “Bob built a large part of the server for the WHO Covid-19 app.”
Lee was also an investor in Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, as well as other tech companies like social audio app Clubhouse, according to his LinkedIn profile. He used the crazybob handle for his LinkedIn and Twitter pages.
Scott, the police chief, offered his condolences to Lee’s family and friends Wednesday night.
“There is no place for this type of violent crime against anyone in our city,” Scott said in the statement. “I want to assure everyone that our investigators are working tirelessly to arrest Mr. Lee and his loved ones and bring justice, just as we try to with every murder in our city.”
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The deadly stabbing could intensify investigations into public safety issues in San Francisco, where residents and business owners are increasingly concerned about violent crime and theft. Mayor London Breed has promised to tackle crime.
According to the police department, there have been 12 murders in San Francisco since the beginning of the year. In the same period last year it had 10 homicides.
Lee’s family, friends and colleagues paid tribute to him.
Krista Lee called her former husband “the most incredible and beautiful human being” and said that “he was everyone’s best friend.”
They had two children, Damien, 17, and Scout, 14. Damien Lee said his father was a down to earth person who always listened.
“He was such a special person in this world. I am so sad that he left us so soon,” Damien Lee said in a statement.
In a statement from her mother, Scout Lee said she was “devastated that anyone would be so cruel as to take my father’s life.”
“He was the best man and an even better father. If you ask anyone who knew him, they would always say he was the best and they would always tell an amazing story about their experiences with him,” she said.
“I will forever miss my father and be devastated by his death because he was not only my father but also one of my best friends,” she later said in the statement.
Former MMA fighter Jake Shields remembered him as a “loyal friend”. In response to a tweet from Shields, Musk said he was “very sorry” to learn of Lee’s death.
Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, called Lee’s death “heartbreaking” on the social media platform Nostr. “Bob was instrumental in the Square and Cash app,” wrote Dorsey.
Joshua Bloch, a friend who worked with Lee at Google in the late 2000s, remembered him as a magnetic person who “always had a huge smile on his face” and “constantly lived life to the fullest.”
In a phone interview on Wednesday, Bloch recalled that Lee was a “self-taught” tech who appeared to “could do anything he wanted,” adding, “I don’t think he realized how special he was. “
“One always says nice things about dead people,” Bloch said, “but in this case I would say exactly the same thing if he were still alive. He was remarkable.”
Bryan Gallion and Phil Helsel contributed.
