Bob Lee, 43, the chief product officer at the cryptocurrency start-up MobileCoin, was fatally stabbed during an apparent attack on a San Francisco street early Tuesday, according to a report in the New York Times that cited social media posts by his family.
The San Francisco Police Department said it responded to a call at about 2:35 a.m. on Tuesday regarding a stabbing in the Rincon Hill neighborhood in the city’s bustling South of Market area. Police, without identifying the victim, reported that a 43-year-old man with “apparent stab wounds” was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died. Television station KPIX, the local CBS affiliate, reported that friends of Mr. Lee said he was the victim. Lee’s father, Rick Lee of Miami, confirmed his son’s death Wednesday morning on Facebook.
Rick Lee said on Facebook that he moved in with his son after Bob’s mother died in 2019, and they had moved to Miami together in October. “Bob would give you the shirt off his back,” Mr. Lee wrote. “He would never look down on anyone and adhered to a strict no-judgment philosophy.”
Lee was the chief technology officer of Square, which was renamed Block in 2021, before he joined MobileCoin in 2021. According to the Times, Lee was also a start-up adviser who had invested in companies including SpaceX and Clubhouse.
Lee was the chief product officer of MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency start-up. The founder and chief executive of MobileCoin, Joshua Goldbard, confirmed in an emailed statement that Lee died on Tuesday but did not give a cause. 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.
Lee was best known for his work on Cash App, now owned by Jack Dorsey’s company Block. Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, called Lee’s death “heartbreaking” on the social media site Nostr. “Bob was instrumental to Square and Cash App,” he wrote.
Dylan Field, the chief executive of the design platform Figma, 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 Lee “was a generous decent human being who didn’t deserve to be killed.”
Megan Quinn, a start-up investor, said on Twitter that Lee was “always encouraging, always upbeat.”
“He was always smiling,” she said. “That’s how I will remember him.”
Homicides in San Francisco have risen slightly in recent years since dropping in 2019 to 41 people, the lowest number in nearly 60 years, according to the city. The number of homicides rose to 56 deaths in 2022. 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 ten homicides.
