Bob Lee, a technology executive who founded the mobile payment company Cash App and previously worked at Square, died Tuesday after he was stabbed near downtown San Francisco, according to his family and police.
San Francisco police said officers responded to a report of a stabbing around 2:35 a.m. Tuesday. The officers found Robert Lee, 43, with apparent stab wounds. He was taken to a hospital and died of his injuries, police said.
Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement Wednesday night that the investigation is in its early stages and he called it a horrific crime.
The incident is under investigation by the police department’s homicide detail, the department said.
Lee had been working as the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency company MobileCoin. He was previously chief technology officer of Square (now known as Block), a financial technology start-up co-founded by the former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey.
Lee went on to create Cash App, a money transfer service.
“Bobby worked harder than anyone and was the smartest person I have ever known. He will be missed by all those that 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 had been living in Miami since October after moving from California, Richard Lee said in the post. They had grown especially close after Bob Lee’s mother died in 2019. It wasn’t immediately clear why Lee was back in the Bay Area.
“I’m so saddened and disheartened to lose my brother,” Tim Oliver Lee wrote on Facebook. “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.”
In a statement Wednesday, Joshua Goldbard, the founder and CEO of MobileCoin, said Bob Lee “passed away yesterday” and praised his business acumen. He did not specify Lee’s cause of death.
“Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature. Bob was the genuine article,” Goldbard said. “He was made for the world that is being born right now, he was a child of dreams, and whatever he imagined, no matter how crazy, he made real.”
