Harare Review of Books

288 pp. August 5, 2025, Steerforth Press. Non-fiction.

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This review first appeared in The Sunday Long Read.

In the early hours of April 4, 2023, Bob Lee, creator of Cash App and instrumental in the development of Android, was stabbed to death on San Francisco’s Main Street. As he lay dying, Lee managed to call 911, but emergency services were unable to save him.

Immediate speculation by people like Elon Musk on then-Twitter and, on their podcast, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg (also known as the Besties) blamed San Francisco’s allegedly high crime rate, and turned the murder into political fodder. Lee, however, was soon found to have been with Nima Momeni just before his death; Momeni was subsequently charged and found guilty of second-degree murder. He’s appealing his conviction.

Lee’s tale is one of genius, hard partying, and drug abuse, as outlined in Last Night in San Francisco. He was well-liked and without obvious enemies. He may have died, though, the book implies, due to his involvement with Momeni’s sister, Khazar, and his introducing her to a drug dealer she claimed assaulted her in the hours before Lee’s murder. The story remains murky, and there are no witnesses: Lee and Momeni were alone at the scene of the stabbing.

We may never know the full truth, but Lucas’s book illuminates many of the facts for us. Lucas uses Lee’s life and death to make an argument for how tech’s promised utopia has failed to materialise—not only for its users, but also for those, like Lee, who dreamed of and worked towards delivering it.

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