Matt Cohler (born March 27, 1977) is an American

venture capitalist Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

. He worked as Vice President of Product Management for

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

until June 2008 and was formerly a general partner at Benchmark. Cohler has been named to the

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

Midas List of top technology investors and in 2019 was named to the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

and

CB Insights CB Insights is a private company with a business analytics platform and global database that provides market intelligence on private companies and investor activities. The platform is targeted at private equity, venture capital, investment bank ...

list of top 10 venture capital investors. Cohler made the Forbes 'America's 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' list in 2015.

Education and early career

Cohler earned a B.A. with honors and distinction in music from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. Early in his career, Cohler worked in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

and was a management consultant at

McKinsey & Company McKinsey & Company (informally McKinsey or McK) is an American multinational strategy and management consulting firm that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. Founded in 1926 by James O. McKinse ...

. He befriended

Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily ...

and went on to become a founding member of Hoffman's startup

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

. Cohler was vice president and general manager at LinkedIn and was considered

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Hoffman's right-hand man. Cohler was one of the first five employees hired at Facebook. He was Facebook's vice president of product management and worked with the team during many of its critical growth phases. He continued to act as a "special advisor" to Facebook CEO

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

. In 2008, he left Facebook and became the youngest general partner at Benchmark.

Benchmark

At Benchmark, Cohler has backed the firm's investments in

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...

Asana An āsana (Sanskrit: आसन) is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose,Verse 46, chapter II, "Patanjali Yoga sutras" by Swami Prabhavananda, published by the Sri Ramakrishna Math p. 111 and late ...

Quora Quora is an American social question-and-answer website and online knowledge market headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can post questions, answ ...

, Greenhouse, Domo,

Tinder Tinder is easily Combustibility and flammability, combustible material used to Firemaking, start a fire. Tinder is a finely divided, open material which will begin to glow under a shower of sparks. Air is gently wafted over the glowing tinder unt ...

, Duo Security, DeepL, Edmodo,

ResearchGate ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a 2014 study by ''Nature'' and a 2016 article in ''Times Higher Education' ...

1stdibs 1stdibs.com, Inc. (stylized as 1stDibs) is an American e-commerce company. It has an online marketplace, which sells luxury items such as high-end furniture for interior design, fine art and jewelry. The company has been recognized for "pushing t ...

, Peixe Urbano,

CouchSurfing CouchSurfing is a hospitality exchange service by which users can request free short-term homestays or interact with other people who are interested in travel. It is accessible via a website and mobile app. It uses a subscription business model ...

, Baixing, and Zendesk. In 2011, he led a $7 million round of funding for

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

, which agreed in April 2012 to be acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. In March 2014, Cohler led Benchmark's investment in Xapo, a

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

wallet/insured cold storage vault. Cohler sits on the boards of Asana, Quora, ResearchGate, and 1stdibs. In 2018, it was announced that Cohler would "step back" from Benchmark and not be a part of their next fund. Although he departed the Benchmark fund, he was expected to continue to hold his board seats, including at Uber. Cohler later left the Uber board in July 2019, at the same time as Arianna Huffington.

Additional affiliations

Cohler is vice president of the

San Francisco Symphony The San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley, San Francisco, Hayes Valley ne ...

board of governors, board trustee at

Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Defense Fund or EDF (formerly known as Environmental Defense) is a United States–based nonprofit environmental advocacy group. The group is known for its work on issues including global warming, ecosystem restoration, oceans, an ...

, and a member of the endowment investment committees at

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99 percent of the couple's wealth from their Facebook shares over their lifetim ...

and the Yale Investments Office.

Politics

In April 2013, a lobbying group called FWD.us (aimed at lobbying for immigration reform and improvements to education) was launched, with Cohler listed as one of the founders.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cohler, Matt American computer businesspeople Yale University alumni 1977 births Living people Facebook employees Businesspeople from New York City McKinsey & Company people American venture capitalists 21st-century American businesspeople American corporate directors Directors of Uber Chan Zuckerberg Initiative