Bob Lee, a fintech pioneer who created the Cash App mobile payment platform, was stabbed to death in San Francisco on Tuesday, his family said. He was 43 years old.
San Francisco police said in a statement that officers were called to a stabbing around 2:35 a.m. downtown, where they discovered a 43-year-old man with stab wounds.
He was subsequently taken to a local hospital, but died of his injuries.
“No arrests have been made and this remains an active investigation,” police said.
Officers did not name the victim, but his family identified him in statements on Facebook.
“I just lost my best friend”, Rick Lee wrote about his son
“Bobby worked harder than anyone and was the smartest person I have ever met. He will be missed by all who knew him,” she added.
“I am so sad and discouraged to lose my brother”, Tim Oliver Lee wrote. “He really was the best of us. I was so lucky to grow up with him and I feel like I’ve lost a part of me.”
Joshua Goldbard, chief executive of payments company MobileCoin, where Lee had been working as a product manager, also confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Lee had died.
“Our dear friend and colleague, Bob Lee, passed away yesterday at the age of 43, survived by a loving family and a collection of close friends and associates,” Goldbard said in a statement.
“Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature. Bob was the genuine article,” she added. “He was made for the world that is being born at this moment, he was a child of dreams, and everything he imagined, crazy as it was, he made it come true.”
read began labor at Google in 2004 as a staff software engineer and was soon working to develop the Android mobile operating system.
In 2010, Lee began working as the first chief technology officer at Square, the e-commerce company created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, now known as Block.
It was there that Lee created what is now known as the Cash App, which allows users in the US and the UK to send money to each other via their mobile phones.
in a podcast interviewLee said he created the service as a side project because he was frustrated with how difficult it was to get money out of PayPal and because he believed there was a market for peer-to-peer payments.
As a father, he said he also wanted to be able to pay for his children’s babysitter without having to stop at an ATM to withdraw money.
“It was a lot of fun. It was a great learning experience, and it was interesting to come in with a new perspective and challenge the assumptions that other people were making,” Lee said.
“The best ideas aren’t obvious until they are, and then they’re very obvious,” he said.
Lee later joined MobileCoin, first as an investor and advisor, and later as the company’s director of products.
“Bob surely had an impact that will last well beyond his brief time on earth,” Goldbard said. “This may sound impressive, but Bob’s real resume is the hearts and minds he touched in his time on earth. Bob’s legacy is the feeling that you can make a difference if you try, and of course, his amazing children.”
