After losing mobile product head and Facebook Home team member Charles Jolley to Battery Ventures, Facebook is facing another departure from a previous Home staffer. Draper Fisher Jurvetson announced today that Facebook’s head of product for Android, Bubba Murarka, has joined the firm as General Partner and Managing Director.
Murarka has been with Facebook since 2008, and has held positions as business development lead, and was most recently head of product for Facebook for Android where he helped start the Facebook Home project.
Murarka helped scale Facebook’s Android product team to more than 50 members and pivot the mobile development strategy toward native applications. During his tenure, Murarka oversaw business strategy for search, photos and places and helped negotiate a number of strategic deals with key Facebook partners including Microsoft, Netflix and Yahoo.
Prior to Facebook, Murarka spent seven years in technical and product roles at Microsoft. While there, he acted as group program manager for Bing’s Bay Area development team. He originally started his career at Microsoft in Seattle as part of the original threedegrees team, which developed an early messaging app.
At DFJ, Murarka will identify new investment opportunities in the early-stage consumer and mobile space. He will also advise current companies on strategic partnerships, growth, product vision and strategy. For Murarka, the DFJ role makes sense, as he has been an angel investor and advisor to more than 10 companies in the consumer mobile and online education sectors since 2008.
This has been a big week for Facebook engineering and product departures. AllThingsD reported yesterday that engineering director Josh Wiseman has departed the social network for an EIR role at Social+Capital.