<p>Over the past year, Facebook has seen its fair share of departures from employees and executives who are either starting a VC fund or camping out at a firm to figure out what their next startup or company will be. In the past two weeks, product manager Justin Shaffer left, and rumor has it he is starting a VC fund. Facebook engineering and product lead Greg Badros announced his departure, and it sounds like he'll be focusing on investing. Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya has been collecting technical talent from Facebook into his EIR program. And there are many more examples of Facebookers going to VC firms or starting to invest of late. Our question is, why doesn't Facebook just form its own venture group so some of these employees could stay connected to the company?</p><p>There are many more reasons beyond just retaining talent for Facebook to form a corporate VC firm. Facebook has a substantial opportunity to do what Google Ventures has done in the VC world. Considering the interest its staffers now have in venture capital and advising startups, Facebook could build a new brand of venture capital. The social network has an enormous amount of talent that has been through the trenches of growth, parsing through large amounts of data, advertising, product development and more. As VCs become more hands-on, Facebook could tap its wealth of knowledge and experience to help portfolio startups. Similar to Google Ventures, Facebook could draw on its enormous base of employees to help grow startups. Facebook has already become an ecosystem with many former employees starting companies, so a company could easily grab great deal flow from its alums alone.</p><p>Facebook had already been participating as a partner in larger funds operated by other VC firms. The social network invested in Kleiner Perkins's Fund in 2010, which was a $250 million fund dedicated to backing social startups. Facebook also helped administer the FbFund, a $10 million seed fund that was jointly funded by Founders Fund and Accel Partners to back startups developing websites and applications related to the Facebook Platform. Facebook discontinued the fund in 2010.</p><p>The opportunity for investing is so much broader than startups built on the Facebook platform.</p><p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/28/should-facebook-start-its-own-version-of-google-ventures/">Keep reading...</a></p>