Get details on the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee in San Francisco (2023)

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Details of how tech executive Bob Lee was stabbed to death in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday were scant as friends and family continued to mourn the man they called brilliant, kind and unlike the rest in the industry. .

San Francisco police found Lee, 43, on the sidewalk in front of a condominium with stab wounds shortly after 2:35 a.m. m. Tuesday. He was taken to a hospital where he died.

The neighborhood where the stabbing occurred is near the Embarcadero waterfront and is filled with tech offices, high-rise apartments and not much later at night.

Lee created the Cash App mobile payment service and was a product manager for the MobileCoin cryptocurrency at the time of his death. Previously, he was CTO at payments company Square, which became Block in late 2021.

Lee was apparently visiting San Francisco after moving to Miami in October, his father, Rick Lee, said on social media. The two lived in the San Francisco suburb of Mill Valley.

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"Bob would give you the shirt he's wearing," Rick Lee wrote. "He never put anyone down and adhered to a strict non-judgmental philosophy. Bobby worked harder than anyone and was the smartest person I've ever met."

San Francisco police provided few details and said the investigation was still in its early stages.

"Because of this, we are not commenting on the evidence, nor will we speculate on the circumstances surrounding this horrific crime," Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement Wednesday.

Lee's death has further fueled the debate over public safety in San Francisco and its dying downtown area, which has yet to recover from the pandemic. twitter ownerElon Musktook to social media to write that "violent crime in San Francisco is horrendous and even if the perpetrators are caught, they are usually immediately released." Musk tagged the city's district attorney in the post.

San Francisco suffers more from property crime than from violent crimes like murder, rape, robbery, and assault.

In a statement, San Francisco Mayor London Breed called the killing "a terrible tragedy" and said the city prioritized public safety.

"I am confident that when the police make an arrest in cases like this, our prosecutors will do whatever it takes to hold each person accountable for their actions," he said.

MobileCoin CEO Josh Goldbard said in aseries of tweetsWednesday Lee's energy was contagious and her mind kaleidoscopic.

"He had such a deep and sincere love," Goldbard wrote. "Traveling with Bob was like seeing the world for the first time."

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Lee joined MobileCoin as an early investor and adviser, later becoming chief product officer and helping launch the Moby app, Goldbard said. Lee was CTO of digital payments company Square in 2013 when he launched a money transfer app now known as Cash App.

Among the tech leaders who shared their devastation over Lee's death was venture capitalist Wesley Chan, co-founder of FPV Ventures. Chan said he became friends with Lee more than a decade ago when they both worked at Google, at a time when software engineers like Lee helped build the Android operating system for smartphones before its launch in 2008.

"He was an incredibly iconic founder in the world of technology," Chan said by phone Wednesday. “He wrote a lot of Android when he was at Google. He became Square's CTO and helped create the Cash app. His resume is like a Fortune cover story.

But Chan said Lee was also generous in helping educate and advocate for other engineers and tech entrepreneurs who came to him for advice. And he was bold about his key role in developing successful products like the widely used Cash App.

"With everything Bob has worked on, it's always been a nice surprise," Chan said. “That's one of the things I loved about him. He was always humble about it, he said, 'Oh, I don't know if it's going to work or not, but let's try it.'