Bob Lee, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor and executive who created Cash App, died Tuesday after he was fatally stabbed in San Francisco, according to reports. He was 43.
Lee was formerly CTO of Jack Dorsey’s payments company Square (which is now called Block) and most recently was the chief product officer at cryptocurrency company MobileCoin, which he joined in late 2021.
The San Francisco Police Department said in an announcement that it responded to a report of a stabbing near the 300 block of Main Street on April 4 at about 2:35 a.m. SFPD did not identify the victim. NBC Bay Area and other outlets subsequently reported that the victim of the stabbing was Lee.
MobileCoin founder and CEO Joshua Goldbard confirmed Lee’s death in a statement to Bloomberg. Lee is survived by “a loving family and collection of close friends and collaborators,” Goldbard said in the statement. “Bob was made for the new world, he was the quintessential creator, leader and consummate hacker. Bob surely had an impact that will last far beyond his short time on Earth.”
In a thread on Twitter, Goldbard said Lee “was like a brother to me.” “Bob left this world too soon,” he wrote. “Everywhere he went Bob breathed love into this world. He had so much deep heartfelt love. Traveling with Bob was like seeing the world for the first time.”
Dorsey, CEO of Block and the former CEO of Twitter, commented about Lee’s death on the Snort decentralized social network (h/t TechCrunch), “It’s real. Getting calls. Heartbreaking. Bob was instrumental to Square and Cash App. STL guy.”
Lee was the creator of Cash App (formerly Square Cash), a mobile payment service that lets users transfer money to each other. Prior to Square, he worked at Google leading Android’s core library team and launching what has become the world’s most-used operating system. In addition, Lee invested in companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Clubhouse, Tile, Figma, Faire, Orchid, Addressable, Nana and Ticket Fairy, according to his profile on LinkedIn.
