Bob Lee, chief product officer of crypto startup MobileCoin Inc. and a well known figure in Silicon Valley, died after being attacked in San Francisco, prompting the city’s top law enforcement official to decry a “senseless act of violence.”
(Bloomberg) — Bob Lee, chief product officer of crypto startup MobileCoin Inc. and a well known figure in Silicon Valley, died after being attacked in San Francisco, prompting the city’s top law enforcement official to decry a “senseless act of violence.”
The San Francisco Police Department said on its website that officers found a 43-year-old man with stab wounds after responding to a call at 2:35 a.m., and the person later died at the hospital.
A spokesperson for the SFPD declined to release further information when contacted by Bloomberg because the homicide is an active investigation. The San Francisco Chronicle first reported Lee’s stabbing.
Lee is survived by “a loving family and collection of close friends and collaborators,” MobileCoin Chief Executive Officer Joshua Goldbard said on Wednesday.
“Bob was made for the new world, he was the quintessential creator, leader, and consummate hacker,” Goldbard said. “Bob surely had an impact that will last far beyond his short time on earth.”
Lee was the first chief technology officer of Square, the startup co-founded by Jack Dorsey, and now called Block Inc. While at the company, he created CashApp, a money transfer tool that lets users buy stocks and Bitcoin. Earlier in his career, he was a software engineer for Google, where he helped develop Android.
Lee’s work on Android and then Square made him a “mythical figure” to young tech workers beginning their careers, said Max Rhodes, who joined Square in his early twenties and worked closely with Lee on Cash App.
“Everybody worshipped him. He could solve problems other people couldn’t solve. All the best engineers wanted to work with him,” Rhodes said.
Lee would later become an investor in Rhodes’ startup Faire. “I don’t think I’d be where I am today without him.”
Figma CEO Dylan Field also recalled Lee’s early support of his company and wrote on Twitter, “It’s so hard to believe he’s gone.”
While San Francisco police stress the investigation is ongoing, the fatal attack of a high-profile executive in a downtown neighborhood near the city’s financial district comes as a blow to efforts by city officials to reverse the narrative of San Francisco as a crime-ridden city.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Mayor London Breed said “public safety will be at the top of the list” of services the city must provide, despite San Francisco’s widening budget deficit and planned spending cuts. “My goal is to make sure that the resources for the police department remain intact,’ Breed said.
Last year, Breed supported a successful campaign to recall Chesa Boudin, the city’s progressive District Attorney, whom she and others criticized for not aggressively prosecuting crime.
Read more: New San Francisco DA Jenkins Vows to Fight City’s Lawlessness
Elon Musk, an outspoken critic of San Francisco since taking over Twitter, chided his successor Brooke Jenkins.
She in turn pushed back.
“As a former homicide prosecutor, I have a deep understanding of how these investigations and prosecutions work,” said Jenkins. “No one who commits a violent crime, or who is a repeat offender are receiving overly lenient plea deals from my office.”
–With assistance from Anne VanderMey, Hannah Miller and Joel Rosenblatt.
(Updates with comment from District Attorney in lead and last paragraph.)
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