Facebook Loses Another Exec – Matt Cohler Joins Benchmark

Update: See our interview with Matt here.

Facebook’s Matt Cohler, the 31-year old VP of Product Management for Facebook, will leave the company this fall and become a General Partner at Benchmark Capital. He will remain a special advisor to Facebook, whatever that means (likely that his stock will continue to vest).

Cohler joined Facebook in 2005. Prior to Facebook, he was a very early employee and the vice president and general manager of LinkedIn. Before LinkedIn and Facebook, Cohler was a consultant in the Silicon Valley office of McKinsey & Company and worked in Beijing at AsiaInfo Holdings, a telecom solutions provider that built China’s Internet infrastructure.

Facebook continues to clean house – Chief Revenue Officer and VP Operations Owen Van Natta left Facebook earlier this year amid rumors of a power struggle (although the official reason was that Van Natta wanted a CEO role at a different startup). And CTO Adam D’Angelo left the company in May. Meanwhile, Facebook as been picking up ex-Google execs left and right to fill out additional roles at the company.

As a personal aside, this is a big loss for Facebook. Cohler is (well, was) a popular exec at Facebook, and a good spokesperson to the press and community. It’s also not a good sign that so many senior execs are leaving such a hot startup. The power struggles need to settle down, and soon, so this company can grow and fulfill whatever destiny is in store for them.