Bob Lee, MobileCoin’s Chief Product Officer, has been killed in a fatal stabbing in San Francisco. At 2:35 a.m. Tuesday, the San Francisco Police Department responded to a report of a stabbing near the 300 block of Main Street in Soma. He was taken to the hospital, but died from his injuries.
A short time later, NBC Bay Area reported that the stabbing victim was 43-year-old Bob Lee. MobileCoin confirmed the news in a statement sent to Bloomberg and ABC7 News.
Before joining MobileCoin, Bob Lee worked at Google for the first few years of Android, focusing on core library development. He then joined Square, the payments company that later became Block, to develop an Android app. He became the company’s first CTO and also created the Cash App.
Bob Lee, also known as “Crazy Bob,” was also an investor in tech startups. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has invested in SpaceX, Clubhouse, Tile, Figma, Faire, Orchid, Addressable, Nana, Ticket Fairy, Gowalla, Asha, SiPhox, Netswitch, Found and others.
There was an outpouring of grief in the tech community following the news. “It’s real. Getting the calls. Heartbreaking. Bob was instrumental in the Square and Cash app. STL guy,” wrote Block CEO Jack Dorsey.
“So sad to hear of @crazybob’s untimely passing. I first met him in the summer of 2006. he didn’t care i was only 14 and we talked about technology / programming. We stayed in touch over the years and he was an early supporter of Figma. It’s so hard to believe he’s gone,” Figma CEO Dylan Field wrote on Twitter.
“What a tragedy. I remember Bob’s code generating some numbers. Bob’s code is in Java, but uses clever reverse engineering to get the best out of many solutions in all kinds of languages,” hintymad wrote on Hacker News.
No arrests have been made in the case, and the San Francisco Police Department has not released additional details.