Bob Lee (businessman)

Bob Lee (December 20, 1979 – April 4, 2023) was an American businessman and software engineer who was best known for helping to create the financial service Cash App. He was the chief technology officer of Square and the chief product officer of MobileCoin.

On April 4, 2023, Lee was fatally stabbed in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. The San Francisco Police Department arrested Nima Momeni for Lee's killing on April 13, 2023.

Early life and career
Lee was born in St. Louis, Missouri on December 20, 1979. Tim Oliver Lee is his brother. In 2019, following the death of Lee's mother, his father moved to Mill Valley, California to live with Lee's family. Bob Lee and his father relocated once more to Miami in October 2022. While attending Lindbergh High School Lee wrote a 3D rendering engine in Turbo Pascal, and became known as "Crazy Bob" for his exuberant energy in playing water polo. Lee attended Southeast Missouri State University and pledged the Sigma Chi.

On August 7, 2001, Lee released a free program to defend Microsoft IIS servers from Code Red, which was at the time a rapidly spreading computer worm. Lee worked for Southeast Missouri State University as a web developer. By 2003 Lee was employed as a technical architect at AT&T. While at AT&T, Lee developed the aspect-oriented programming (AOP) framework dynaop similar to the Spring Framework for Java, featured in Oracle Magazine.

Lee was employed at Google as a staff software engineer from October 2004 to January 2010, and helped develop the Android mobile operating system. Lee co-authored the dependency injection framework Guice with Kevin Bourrillion in 2006 while at Google to modularize AdWords. Lee developed Guice based on ideas he had for Apache Struts, which he concurrently worked on. In 2008, Lee and Bourrillion were awarded the Jolt Award for their work on Guice. Lee transferred to the core libraries team in 2007 eventually leading the team. In May 2009, Lee created a Java dependency injection proposal with Rod Johnson, and he was also part of the expert group for a Java proposal which added lambda expressions, as well as another proposal to add concurrency to the language. Additionally Lee worked on Dalvik, an Android process virtual machine. During Oracle v. Google, Lee was called as a witness.

In January 2010, the e-commerce company Square recruited Lee. He became the company's chief technology officer and led development on the company's Android app, eventually taking over development on Square's iOS app from now-deceased co-founder Tristan O'Tierney. After becoming the chief technology officer, Lee moved to San Francisco from his St. Louis, Missouri home. In 2013, he helped Square build Cash App, then Square Cash. He left Square in 2014, investing in several tech startups, including Clubhouse, SpaceX, and Figma. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lee assisted the World Health Organization with its app. In 2021, he joined the cryptocurrency payment firm MobileCoin as its chief product officer.

Personal life
Lee had polydactyly before undergoing surgery.

In 2019, Lee and his wife, Krista, separated. The couple had two children together. Krista and Lee's two children stayed in the Bay Area when Lee moved to Miami to live with his father.

Death
In the early morning of April 4, 2023, Lee was stabbed in the 300 block of Main Street in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. Police were called to the scene at 2:35 a.m. local time. CCTV footage shows a wounded Lee stumbling to a parked car with its hazard lights on and lifting his shirt to show his wound; the car immediately drove away, after which Lee collapsed on the ground. By the time police arrived on the scene, he was unconscious. He was taken to a local hospital where he died from his injuries at the age of 43. The autopsy report released by the San Francisco medical examiner's office showed that he suffered knife wounds to his heart and lung. The autopsy also revealed evidence of alcohol, cocaine and ketamine consumption.

On April 13, the San Francisco Police Department arrested 38-year-old Nima Momeni of Emeryville for the murder of Lee. Momeni had been working in the technology industry since 2005 and allegedly knew Lee. The nature of how Lee and Momeni knew each other or a motive was not initially revealed. However, on May 14, 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that Lee and Khazar Elyassnia (Momeni's sister) had a "casual sexual relationship" despite her being married and that Lee had dated Momeni's ex-girlfriend three years before his death. Hours before Lee's death, Momeni had confronted Lee about whether or not his sister was doing drugs or anything else with Lee that Momeni considered inappropriate due to Elyassnia's marriage. Lee had attended several house parties with Elyassnia before his death and had taken several drugs with her at the time of his death. Elyassnia was also arrested for driving under the influence but the charges were later dismissed.

Publications

 * Tate, Bruce; Clark, Mike; Lee, Bob (2003). Bitter EJB. Shelter Island: Manning Publications. ISBN 9781930110953.