The scene outside an apartment building below the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge where technology executive Bob Lee was fatally stabbed on Wednesday, April 5, 2023 in San Francisco. AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Details of how tech executive Bob Lee was fatally stabbed in downtown San Francisco early Tuesday were scarce as friends and family continued to mourn the man they described as brilliant, kind and different from others in the industry .
San Francisco police found Lee, 43, with stab wounds on the sidewalk in front of an apartment building just after 2:35 a.m. Tuesday. He was taken to a hospital where he died. He leaves behind two children.
The neighborhood where the stabbing took place is near the Embarcadero waterfront and is full of engineering offices, towering condos, and not much else until late at night.
Lee is known for creating the widely used mobile payment service Cash App while serving as the chief technology officer of payments company Square, now known as Block. At the time of his death, he was Chief Product Officer of cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin.
Lee was back in San Francisco for a visit after moving to Miami in October, his father Rick Lee said on social media. The two had lived in Mill Valley, a suburb of San Francisco.
“Bob would give you the shirt off his back,” wrote Rick Lee. “He would never look down on anyone and adhered to a strict philosophy of non-judgment. Bobby worked harder than anyone and was the smartest person I have ever known.”
San Francisco Police Sgt. Adam Lobsinger said in a video message Thursday that the investigation is early days and the department will not comment on evidence or speculate on circumstances.
Lee defied the arrogant and self-absorbed “tech brother” stereotype attached to certain men in the San Francisco Bay Area tech scene and instead exuded an “innate friendliness,” said longtime friend Tommy Sowers.
Sowers and Lee first met at a fundraiser in Washington, DC, where Sowers, a former Green Beret and Iraq War veteran, was running for Congress. Lee, a new hire at Square, was promoting an app that could help him raise funds for his campaign. Both men were from Missouri.
Lee’s two children would join the men on hikes and dinners. It’s not uncommon for Lee to be late, Sowers said, and he loved San Francisco.
“I wanted to go to bed at 9. He talked me into going somewhere by midnight and then he said ‘well there’s another one’ and you went there. And he says, ‘There’s another one.’ He just had really limitless energy.”
Part of those late-night sessions included talks about technology, including San Francisco’s unique role far removed from political power in Washington and big money in New York.
“San Francisco is all about the idea, and you’re as good as your current or next idea,” said Sowers, who later founded his own real estate technology company with Lee’s consultant and now works for a North Carolina company. based private jet company.
Sowers said he doesn’t know the origins of the “crazy bob” grip Lee used on Twitter.
“But it worked. Not in the ruthless sense, but he was willing to do anything.”
Lee has also been generous with his time to coach and mentor other engineers and entrepreneurs, said Wesley Chan, co-founder of FPV Ventures. The two met more than a decade ago when they both worked at Google, where Lee helped develop the Android smartphone operating system before its release in 2008.
Lee’s death has further reignited debate about public safety in San Francisco and its dying downtown, which has not yet recovered from the pandemic. Twitter owner Elon Musk posted on the social media site that “Violent crimes in SF are appalling and even when attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.” Musk tagged the city’s district attorney in the post.
San Francisco suffers more from property crimes than violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and assault. In a statement, San Francisco Mayor London Breed called the killing “a terrible tragedy” and said the city prioritizes public safety.
Sowers said it was hard to imagine what led to Lee’s violent death.
“I can’t think of a situation where he would start a conflict,” he said. “That’s the tragedy of it.”
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O’Brien contributed from Providence, Rhode Island.
