SAN FRANCISCO — After last week’s stabbing of Bob Lee, an entrepreneur and creator of Cash App, in a San Francisco neighborhood popular among tech workers, prominent tech executives, including Elon Musk, ripped into the city’s leaders.
Matt Ocko, a venture capitalist, said officials in San Francisco had “literally blood on their hands.” Others suggested homelessness and runaway violence were to blame.
But that story was turned on its head on Thursday when police arrested Nima Momeni, who they say knew Mr. Lee and worked in the same industry. Since Mr. Momeni was identified, other voices in the tech world have hit back at those who used Mr. Lee’s death to vilify the city on social media.
“I suspect we’ll find that this story doesn’t represent anything universal about the great city of San Francisco,” said Jeff Lawson, CEO of the technology communications company Twilio, whose offices are just a few blocks from where Mr. Lee was killed. “It’s rather a tragic anomaly, the result of interpersonal conflict — the kind that can happen in any city and time.”
Mr. Lee was killed in an upscale neighborhood called Rincon Hill, between Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, and a quiet area near the bay with offices for companies like Google, Meta, and Salesforce. San Francisco was a city he loved, Mr. Lee’s brother, Oliver Lee, said Thursday, adding that the steps taken to criticize the city in light of his death were “not the way he would have been.”
As news of his murder spread last week, some Bay Area technology entrepreneurs and venture capitalists concluded that San Francisco’s crackdown on crime and homelessness had led to his death. Many of them accused the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and Chesa Boudin, the former prosecutor impeached by a recall last year.
Jason Calacanis, a tech investor and podcaster, tweeted a video from Kevin Benedicto, a San Francisco Police Commissioner, in which the official warned against falling into a “preconceived narrative” about a “heinous act of violence.”
“THESE ARE THE CRAZES RUNNING IN SAN FRANCISCO,” Mr. Calacanis wrote with the video. “EVIL INCOMPETENT FOOLS & GRIFTERS WHO ACHIEVE NOTHING EXCEPT TO ENABLE UNSOCIAL VIOLENCE.”
The stacking continued last Friday on a technology podcast hosted by Mr Calacanis and other venture capitalists. On the show, David Sacks, founder and partner of Craft Ventures, said he would “bet dollars on dimes” that Mr. Lee’s murder was like a Los Angeles case where “a young woman was basically stabbed for no reason by a psychotic homeless person.”
Mr Musk, the billionaire head of Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, agreed “absolutely” with Mr Sacks’ sentiments in a response to his tweet. Mr Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Brooke Jenkins, the San Francisco district attorney, denounced Musk on Thursday, specifically calling his tweets about Mr. Lee’s death “reckless and irresponsible.” National crime data shows that the violent crime rate in the city of more than 800,000 has declined or remained stable in recent years, and the homicide rate in 2020 was low compared to other major U.S. cities.
However, the city has seen an increase in property crime since 2020, along with a visible growth in homeless camps and drug use in public areas, all factors highlighted last year during the campaign to recall Mr. Boudin. After his removal, he was replaced by Mrs. Jenkins, who had criticized her predecessor as being too lenient on criminals.
When asked on Thursday if he had changed his mind about the situation following Mr. Momeni’s arrest, Mr. Calacanis emailed Thursday: “When was the last time you walked a mile in San Francisco? Do you think it’s safe?”
When asked again to explain his position, he explained that it had not changed. “The press trying to make this a ‘gotcha’ situation is just pathetic,” Mr Calacanis said.
He added that he had watched “San Francisco go from the No. 1 destination for founders and senior executives to the bottom of the list. The number 1 reason given is crime and violence.”
Mr Sacks did not respond to a request for comment, but his spokeswoman sent a link to a podcast, published early Friday, in which he and Mr Calacanis defended their previous assessments that San Francisco’s unsafe conditions were responsible for Mr Sacks . Lee’s death. On the recording, Mr. Sacks that his bet that Mr. Lee had been killed by a person with no home “made sense”.
Some tech workers and venture capitalists hit back at the arrest and the quick judgments of others who implicated the city.
“The same people who bought a recall based on their racist lies have been telling lies about how Bob died, all to further their political agenda,” said Anil Dash, a tech entrepreneur, wrotereferring to Mr Boudin’s deposition.
In an interview Friday, Mr. Dash called himself an acquaintance of Mr. Lee, who was familiar with the slain man’s zeal for San Francisco. “He didn’t want San Francisco demonized,” Mr. Dash said. “To contradict the man’s values and use them for political gain for things he disagreed with is the height of cynicism.”
Brett Ashton, 56, who is black and has worked for Bay Area technology companies for more than 30 years, said he was not surprised by Mr Musk’s comments given what the Tesla chief and Twitter owner had said in the past. said. But he said he felt Mr. Calacanis had crossed into new territory by blaming the local community.
“Their comments are very much about black people and brown people and people who don’t look like them,” he said in an interview. “They’re just pushing a narrative that tech bros are falling victim to a dystopian hellscape.”
San Francisco prosecutors said in a court document on Friday that Mr Momeni, 38, stabbed Mr Lee, 43, on a remote San Francisco street in the early hours of April 4 and then drove off in his sports car.
The two men had argued earlier in the evening over whether something “inappropriate” had happened between Mr Lee and Mr Momeni’s sister, prosecutors said. A lawyer for Mr Momeni, Paula Canny, said there was no “romance”.
Some in the tech industry tried not to make political statements after Mr. Lee, but instead remembered what he had done for San Francisco. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Block, the developer of the Square payment system, recalled last week in an internal email from The New York Times that Mr. Lee helped clean up trash around the company’s Market Street office .
It was during one of those cleanups that he and Mr. Lee came up with the idea for Cash App, the company’s popular peer-to-peer mobile payment app, wrote Mr. Dorsey. Mr. Lee sent the first Cash App transaction to Mr. Dorsey in August 2013.
Oliver Lee said on Thursday his family is still grieving and the politicization of his brother’s death has added to their emotional burden.
“We’re focused on healing and Bob’s legacy, and making sure people remember him as he was,” he said. “At first we lost him. And then all that crazy attention. It’s been hard.’
Shawn Hubler, Thomas Fuller And Kalley Huang reporting contributed.
