The Matt Cohler Exit Interview

MC: (Laughter)

MA: The Googlization of Facebook is something I wanted to talk about.

MC: It's all to be determined. The other thing we are going to get more precision around is what exactly is going to be involved in my ongoing relationship with Facebook. I know directionally, at a high level, that's going to be to continue to give counsel to Mark and to the management team and to the company about the overall company direction, product strategy in particular, and just the overall course of the organization

MA: Okay. Let's talk about Benchmark for a second. So Bill, Benchmark was founded in the early 90's, before you joined. You put yourselves on the map in 97 when you invested in a company called eBay. I think you put 6.7 million dollars into eBay. How did that work out for you?

BG: Pretty good. As you know already.

MA: It turned into, was it over 5 billion dollars?

BG: I don't remember the numbers

MA: It was one of the most, if not the most profitable venture investments in the history of Silicon Valley.

BG: Probably correct. I don't know the exact numbers.

MA: One thing that I heard is that eBay never cashed that check, or they cashed it, but never spent it. Is that correct?

BG: Bob was the board member on the deal not me, but I have heard the same thing.

MA: You joined in 1999?