Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App and the chief product officer of MobileCoin, was stabbed to death in San Francisco, according to police and the cryptocurrency platform, NPR reported on Wednesday.
According to a statement from San Francisco police, officers responded quickly after receiving a report at 2:35 a.m. on Tuesday and saw a person injured by stabs and died at a hospital.
The police were unable to identify the individual at the time, but the father of Cash App founder Rick Lee confirmed his death.
San Francisco officials have been chastised for the city’s rise in violent crime.
As Bob Lee was stabbed to death, the father of the cash app founder wrote on Facebook: “I just lost my best friend, my son Bob Lee when he lost his life on the street in San Francisco early Tuesday morning.” “Thank you to those who have reached out in support”, he added.
CBS News reported that Bob Lee, 43, lived in Miami, Florida, but he was in San Francisco for a leadership summit and stayed for extra days to visit his friends.
Founder of Tesla and CEO of Twitter Elon Musk said while paying tributes to Lee: “Violent crime in [San Francisco] is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.”
As of April 2, there have been 12 homicides in San Francisco this year, according to the San Francisco Police Department. In the same period in 2022, there had been 10 homicides.
Bob Lee’s brother Tim Oliver Lee, while in an Instagram post noted: “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.”
“He was a generous decent human being who didn’t deserve to be killed,” said Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra on Twitter, a cryptocurrency company, also adding that the founder of Cash App also was a father.
Cash App’s net worth is estimated at $40 billion as per Forbes. It is a payment platform where people transfer money to each other.
I just got devastating news that our friend Bob Lee (@crazybob ) was killed in SF early today.
Bob was a dad, the former CTO of Square where he created Cash App & CTO of Mobile Coin. He was a generous decent human being who didn’t deserve to be killed.https://t.co/RnzA1Idpun
— Bill Barhydt (@billbarhydt) April 5, 2023
Elon Musk, the chief executive of Twitter and Tesla, said he was “very sorry to hear” of Mr. Lee’s death and pressed the city’s district attorney to do more to prevent violent crime. “Is the city taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat violent offenders?” he wrote in a tweet directed at Brooke Jenkins, the district attorney.
“Everywhere Bob went he made friends,” Joshua Goldbard, the founder and chief executive of MobileCoin, wrote. “He did this by being a person who brought people together. He was loved far and wide because of his ability to build community.”
Mr. Goldbard said on Twitter that Mr. Lee “was like a brother to me” and had a “kaleidoscopic” mind.
“Pick a topic and Bob would be right there with you telling you all of the ways he had thought about the idea already,” Mr. Goldbard said.
The chief executive of the design platform, Figma, Dylan Field, said on Twitter that he had first met Mr. Lee in 2006. “He didn’t care that I was only 14 and we talked tech / geeked out about programming,” Mr. Field said.
Bill Barhydt, the chief executive of digital financial platform Abra, said on Twitter that Mr. Lee “was a generous decent human being who didn’t deserve to be killed.”
Megan Quinn, a start-up investor, said on Twitter that Mr. Lee was “always encouraging, always upbeat.”
“He was always smiling,” she said. “That’s how I will remember him.”
