Bob Lee, the former Square chief technology officer who helped launch the Cash app, has died after an apparent knife attack in San Francisco.
Lee’s death was confirmed by Josh Goldbard, CEO of his current employer, MobileCoin. Lee joined MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency and digital payments startup, in 2021 as a product manager.
“Our dear friend and colleague Bob Lee passed away yesterday at the age of 43, kept alive by a loving family and a group of close friends and collaborators,” Goldbard said in a statement to CNN Wednesday morning. “Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature. Bob Lee was the real article. He was made for the world to be born now, he was a dream child, and everything he imagined, as crazy as he was, he made it real.”
Goldbard continued, “We will miss you, Bob. We love you.”
Bob’s father, Rick Lee, also confirmed the news in a statement on Facebook, writing, “I just lost my best friend.” The father said his son “lost his life on the streets of San Francisco early Tuesday.”
“Bob Lee will give you the shirt on the back,” the father wrote. “He will look down on no one and adhere to a strict non-judgmental philosophy.”
Rick Lee added that his son “would be missed by all who knew him” and thanked those who reached out and offered their support.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed also responded to the news in a statement Wednesday, calling Lee’s death a “terrible tragedy.” Breed said police are still investigating Lee’s death and will share more details soon.
According to an earlier statement from the San Francisco Police Department, officers responded to a report of a stabbing incident early Tuesday morning in the Rincon area of San Francisco, finding “a 43-year-old adult male victim with visible stab wounds.”
“Officers provided assistance and called paramedics to the scene. The victim was taken to a local hospital with serious injuries. Despite the best efforts of paramedics and medical personnel, the victim succumbed to his injuries.”
Several local news agencies quoted unnamed police sources as saying Li was the stabbing victim. Police said no arrests had been made and the investigation is still ongoing.
San Francisco is grappling with an apparent increase in crime as it still tries to recover from the pandemic. Preliminary police data indicates that there have been 12 murders in San Francisco this year, a 20% increase from the same period the previous year. In total, there were 56 murders in San Francisco in 2022, the same number of murders the city had in 2021.
Although Goldbard did not provide the circumstances of Lee’s death in his statement, he wrote in a separate Twitter thread in response to the news, “As a permanent resident of the Bay Area, I have more questions than answers tonight.”
“I don’t know how to fix this error, but I know something is wrong in our gray city,” Goldbard wrote on Twitter.
Overflow of grief
Many others in the tech world and beyond reacted to the news of Lee’s death with an outpouring of shock and grief.
“It’s hard to believe he’s gone,” Figma CEO Dylan Field wrote in a tweet, recalling how he first met Lee in 2006.
Tech investor Ryan Gilbert of Launchpad Capital tweeted that Lee “was one of a kind,” adding, “Hope his memory is a blessing.”
Mixed martial arts fighter Jake Shields remembered Lee as a “faithful friend” in a tweet, writing “RIP brother.”
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Shields’ tweet caught the attention of new Twitter owner Elon Musk, who took the stand to say, “Violent crime in San Francisco is horrendous, and even if the attackers are caught, they are often immediately released. ” Musk tagged San Francisco District Attorney Brock Jenkins in his tweet.
Square (now called Block) CEO Jack Dorsey responded to the news via a post early Wednesday on the decentralized social media app Nostr. “Heartbreaking,” Dorsey wrote. “Bob was instrumental in Square and Cash.”
Lee was Square’s first CTO. Prior to joining Square, Lee was at Google, where he helped lead the team that launched Android.
