Several major venture-capital firms were vying to fund Uber, his fledgling company. While presenting his business plan at the offices of Benchmark Capital, Mr. Kalanick briefly excused himself to phone three other potential investors. His message: They needed to move fast.

One Benchmark partner, Bill Gurley, wouldn’t have it. “No need to talk to those guys,” he told Mr. Kalanick. “Let’s get the deal done here.” After two days of wooing, Benchmark provided nearly $12 million in capital for a 20% stake in Uber, pegging its valuation at $60 million.

That is just one scene in the latest gold rush to sweep Silicon Valley, where prospectors are now fighting over buzzy start-ups and companies are getting their pick of deep-pocketed backers. The momentum is driving a wave of deal envy and trash talking—complete with power plays, personal feuds and turf wars among Wall Street bankers, billionaire speculators and venture-capital veterans.

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In a move BoomTown is still trying to noodle over, longtime Facebook exec Matt Cohler (pictured here) will be leaving the social networking site to become a general partner at Benchmark Capital.

Cohler, who is currently Facebook’s VP of Product Management, was one of its earliest hires and, as I wrote once, seemed like “the Yoda figure at Facebook to me.”

He will not leave the prominent social-networking company until the fall, even though Cohler is already featured on the venture capital firm’s Web site.

And, after he goes, Cohler will remain as a “special adviser”–is that like a special guest star on a television show a la Heather Locklear?–to Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and senior management.

It is a great get for Benchmark to grab Cohler, of course, who will be its youngest partner ever.

And while the venture firm was the hot shop in the Web 1.0 era, it has not been as prominent a partner in the Web 2.0 space, although Benchmark does have investments in sites like Yelp and Zillow.

A New Yorker, Cohler went to Yale, worked in China, was a management consultant at McKinsey and was also part of LinkedIn’s founding team.

(You know, the LinkedIn that just got $53 million in funding for a $1 billion valuation.)

As I also wrote once: “And don’t be fooled by the baby-faced looks–he apparently worked for a year as a jazz musician in Europe and, therefore, is a hep cat.”

Hep cat or not, he has been one of Facebook’s and Zuckerberg’s closer advisers from its earliest days and his departure will be scrutinized internally and externally.

The big question? Is the move COO Sheryl Sandberg cleaning house of old Facebookers or does the smooth Cohler–who already looks like a VC–simply want to be part of the larger mix in Silicon Valley?

Sources tell me the latter, as Sandberg and Cohler got along well with the recent transition in management at Facebook (some execs, not so much).

In fact, Sandberg tried to get Cohler to stay, said these sources.

In a twist on that, it was Cohler who was one of the key execs in recruiting former top Google (GOOG) exec Sandberg into Facebook.

But it is true that, as is typical as start-ups mature, a lot of longtime execs have left and still more will likely be leaving, as more professional managers arrive.

Former top exec Owen Van Natta left in February, and CTO Adam D’Angelo, who has been friends with Zuckerberg since high school, departed recently.

Cohler said, in an interview this morning with BoomTown, that he was content at Facebook and would not have left had he not been approached by Benchmark’s Peter Fenton recently.

Fenton came there from Accel Partners in 2006, by the way, for those keeping track, and Accel is Facebook’s largest VC investor.

And who says Silicon Valley is like a well-paid game of not-so-musical chairs?

“I would be staying at Facebook happily had this not come along… but it made sense to me,” said Cohler. “It was hard to leave, as I really am excited about what’s going on at Facebook.”

But Cohler did note the shift at Facebook from hot start-up to a more established player.

“Looking back at everything I have done [at Facebook]…I am a generalist and can cover all the bases and when the company was small, that was useful,” he said. “But I really find it interesting working with great entrepreneurs and that is also something I love to do.”

At Benchmark, Cohler said he will focus on Internet start-ups, obviously, and said he is especially interested in the mobile sector.

Benchmark partner Bill Gurley noted that bringing Cohler is in keeping with the venture firm’s focus on staying current with the typically younger entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Gurley himself joined Benchmark at 33 and Fenton at 32.

“It is critical to stay relevant and one of those ways is to keep bringing younger people into our ranks,” said Gurley. “And if you had to say who would be best person in his generation to make a great VC, it would be Matt, who is one of the most networked persons in the Web 2.0.”

Also said Gurley, pointing to Cohler’s involvement in two of the Web’s recent hits, Facebook and LinkedIn, he added: “It takes a lot of judgment to get in front of trends like that.”

Of course, I redubbed it: “Has the Internet Jumped the Shark?” For the love of All Things Fonzie, you bet it has.

The discussion centered around what I think most agree is an inflated market for start-ups, worrisome especially given a looming recession.

Here is my video and one from the panel, in this case a snippet of Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley talking about Second Life, in which he is an investor:

Interestingly, none of the panelists–Gurley, Glam CEO Samir Arora, Lise Buyer of Class V Group and Aggregate Knowledge CEO Paul Martino–seemed bothered by that for a variety of reasons (lots of bigger companies interested in acquiring little ones, for example).

I am a little less okay with the rampant frothiness, insane valuations and who-cares mentality, which has seeped into the market and can only result in lack of discipline and too many me-too companies.

While–thankfully–the weak IPO market is protecting the investing public from the insanity this time around (no Pets.com!), it’s still not a good thing for the industry to see too many companies without solid paths to profitability being formed with the hope of some pie-in-the-sky idea that endlesss advertising revenues will support the whole rickety enterprise.

But that’s just me.