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Photo by Eirik Solheim on flickr

Matt Cohler

General Partner & Investor

Benchmark

POSITION

General Partner & Investor

COMPANY

Benchmark

COUNTRY

USA

Website

Benchmark

SCENE

Business

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Why is Matt Cohler a Global Shaker?

Matt Cohler is a general partner at Benchmark, alongside other successful venture capitalists such as Peter Fenton and Bill Gurley. He has supported some of the world’s most innovative companies, such as Dropbox, Instagram, Asana, Quora, Greenhouse, Domo, Duo, Edmodo, ResearchGate, CouchSurfing, and Zendesk.

The prolific investor is also known for his roles at Facebook and LinkedIn. As Facebook’s vice president of product management, as well as one of the company’s first five employees, he was involved in many of the social media network’s critical growth stages. He left Facebook in 2008, becoming Benchmark’s youngest general partner.  Prior to his role at Facebook, he was one of the founding members of LinkedIn alongside CEO Reid Hoffman. He served as the company’s vice president and general manager, as well as Reid’s right-hand man.

“If you look at the things that I’ve done in my career so far…it’s really basically been about one core thing: Try and find really interesting companies, and try to help great entrepreneurs to help build companies that are going to last and can have a meaningful impact on people in the world,” Matt told TechCrunch in 2008. “I was unbelievably lucky to do that with Reid Hoffman, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur and then I get to do it again with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. I always knew that that’s the thing at the core that I’m most passionate about, is that process. It’s something I want to keep doing for the foreseeable future.”

In 2013, Matt was listed among the founders of FWD.us, an lobbying group that advocates for prison and immigration reform.

In October 2018, a regulatory disclosure stated that Matt has chosen to step back from investing with Benchmark. While his future plans are up for speculation, he is currently a board member at Uber, the firm’s most highly valued private investment.

Matt refers to himself as a “failed college dropout”, graduating with honors from Yale University.

Tags: Benchmark, Investment and Funding, VC

Last updated: May 16, 2019