Matt Cohler announced he was leaving Facebook; the interview from TechCrunch.

The move to Benchmark Capital was surprising to me as I always thought of Matt as the Steve Ballmer of Facebook.   Being early stage at both Linked In and Facebook, Matt is clearly in charge of the secret sauce of social networking.

I met Matt in August 2005 in Palo Alto the day TheFacebook bought the domain Facebook.com and then again at an investment conference in NY a few months later.  I think their traffic was a mere billion pageviews a month at the time.

It will be interesting to see if Matt is leaving Facebook at its peak or not.   Once a company grows to over 100+ people the processes, policies and Dilbert-style managers of a larger organization seriously tax the mind and soul of entrepreneurs.   200-300 Facebook staff are new to the company, new to their jobs and trying to find ways to accumulate as much stock as possible.   Must be mayhem.

Best of luck and congratulations, Matt!  Spread some VC love on the East Coast too.