(NewsNation) — When he first met Bob Lee, founder of mobile payment service Cash App, Jake Shields didn’t realize what his friend meant to the tech industry.
Other people would tell Shields, a former UFC/MMA fighter, that Lee was a “super big deal.” But Lee never really talked about his own accomplishments.
“(He was) a good human being — he added to society, he was a good person, everyone loved him,” Shields said.
Lee, 43, was fatally stabbed in San Francisco early Tuesday morning. No arrests have been made and no description of a suspect has been released, NewsNation local affiliate KRON reported.
“It all hit me out of nowhere,” Shields told NewsNation on Wednesday in discussing his friend’s death. “It’s definitely sad and also completely senseless.”
Lee was someone with “zero enemies,” who Shields remembers as having good, friendly energy.
“It sucks that something happened to such a good person,” Shields said.
The two would go out together and party, but they would also have deeper phone calls in which they would discuss political issues.
“Sometimes we’d disagree politically, but he’s a guy who would like to discuss and hear other perspectives,” Shields said.
Along with creating Cash App, Lee was the chief product officer at MobileCoin.
“Bob was so much more than a technologist. Bob was an artist. Everywhere he went, Bob breathed love into this world. He had so much deep, heartfelt love,” Joshua Goldbard, MobileCoin’s founder and CEO, said on Twitter.
Further details on Lee’s stabbing are still unknown. But for Shields, this is clearly just another “senseless act of violence in San Francisco.”
Shields used to live in the area where Lee was killed. While he initially felt OK there, Shields ended up feeling unsafe, especially after his girlfriend was robbed, so he ended up moving to Las Vegas.
“The city — it’s had problems for a while. But it’s very clear to anyone that’s been there for a long time that it keeps getting worse,” Shields said. “People talk and say they’re going to do things, but no one does anything.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
