Bob Lee, a financial technology pioneer who created mobile payment platform Cash App, 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. in the city center, where they discovered a 43-year-old man with stab wounds.
He was later taken to a local hospital but died from his injuries.
“No arrests have been made and the investigation remains active,” 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 known. He will be missed by all who knew him,” he added.
“I am very sad and heartbroken to lose my brother,” wrote Tim Oliver Lee. “He really was the best of us. I was very lucky to grow up with him and I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself.”
Joshua Goldbard, CEO 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 group of close friends and collaborators,” Goldbard said in a statement.
“Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature. Bob was something genuine,” he added. “He was made for the world that is being born right now, he was a child of dreams, and everything he imagined, no matter how crazy it was, he made come true.”
Lee began working at Google in 2004 as a software engineer and soon worked 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, which is now known as Block.
It was there that Lee created what is now known as Cash App, which allows users in the US and 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 by 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 his children’s babysitter without having to go through an ATM to get cash.
“It was a lot of fun. It was a great learning experience and it was interesting to come in with a new perspective and question the assumptions that other people were making,” Lee said.
“The best ideas aren’t obvious until they are obvious, and then they are very obvious,” he said.
Lee later joined MobileCoin, first as an investor and advisor, and then as the company’s chief product officer.
“Bob surely made an impact that will last far beyond his short time on earth,” Goldbard said. “This may seem impressive, but Bob’s true 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 wonderful children.”
