Facebook plays down Cohler's departure

Jemima Kiss
guardian.co.uk, Friday June 20 2008 14.40 BST

The latest high-profile executive move in Silicon Valley comes at the social networking giant Facebook, which announced late yesterday that product management vice-president Matt Cohler is leaving the company.

Cohler was one of the first five members of staff and was seen as an important ally of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook has been careful to characterise his departure as positive development.

The 31-year-old will be taking up a role as a partner at venture capital firm Benchmark, but will become a formal advisor to Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg said in a statement that Cohler "has been an important contributor to Facebook's growth and success and we are pleased he will continue working in a formal role as a special advisor to me and the Facebook management team".

Cohler will be responsible for finding and investing in promising new internet and mobile firms, as well as developing companies already funded by Benchmark.

Before starting at Facebook in 2005, Cohler helped to establish the business networking site LinkedIn, which this week announced $53m (£27m) in funding that valued the site at $1bn.

Benchmark had reportedly been trying to recruit Cohler for some time and offered the special advisor role as a sweetener for breaking with Facebook, which recently overtook MySpace to become the world's most used social networking site, according to comScore figures.

Cohler told the Wall Street Journal's BoomTown blog that he would have been happy to stay at Facebook, had he not been approached by Benchmark.

"Looking back at everything I have done... I am a generalist and can cover all the bases and when the company was small, that was useful," he told the WSJ blog.

"But I really find it interesting working with great entrepreneurs and that is also something I love to do."

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