Alice Arnaud — Founder
Photographie : Andrea Graziosi — Studio Voo · Sky Center, Tour La Marseillaise
Devoted to intelligence — in all its forms.
The intelligence of markets: M&A at Goldman Sachs in London. Of hypergrowth: business development at Rocket Internet, where extreme growth is structured to the highest standard of strategic execution. Of organisations: the digital transformation of a major mutual insurance group — and applied work, at the frontier, on data, blockchain and AI. Of people: years of executive search and leadership advisory, independently and then within a renowned executive search firm — where the reading that became Goban was forged. Of machines: Frontière. Alice Arnaud thinks in systems — which is where teams, organisations and decisions become legible. Sciences Po, HEC. Marseille — France & international.
Speaking the language of the deal, reading the organisation as a theorist, assessing as an instrumented practitioner: three competencies rarely found in the same person — and precisely the ones the market leaves without an owner.
Three things, rarely combined.
Neutrality
An eye that neither bought the deal nor sold the team.
Method
A triangulated reading, on a constant model, cumulative from one engagement to the next.
Time
A decision investigated within the timeline of a portfolio company.
A market in a pincer, an empty segment.
The top of the market is served — the investor-assessment practices in the United States, the leadership advisory of the major search firms on Paris large-cap: proof that this is bought, and that market education is done. Below, French small and mid-cap — the heart of private equity — remains without a dedicated method: one line in the due diligences, never a reading. The segment is caught in a pincer — too small for the big players, too demanding for the generalists: exactly the configuration where a specialised boutique takes root. This is that boutique.
From above: large-cap is served — proof that this is bought.
In the middle: one line in the due diligences — never a method.
The space: small and mid-cap, the heart of French private equity.
The names.
Frontière is the brand and the promise. Tesuji is the move. Goban is the reading.
Tesuji (手筋) — the skilful move: the precise placement that achieves more than an accumulation of force. It is the name our engine carries.
Goban is the repertoire: the whole of our proprietary matrices — one per family of decision, and that is where what we know lives. The first reads a leadership team as a system; the others are being written.
Okame hachimoku — the onlooker sees eight moves ahead. The game is open; the right move is waiting to be played.
The machine produces. The human judges.
Artificial intelligence now produces, in minutes and at near-zero cost, cognitive work at senior-analyst level: analysis, synthesis, modelling. When analysis becomes abundant, the hierarchy of value inverts: what becomes scarce — and therefore what counts — is what the machine will not carry. The judgment that commits a responsibility, consented access to people, the confidence of a board, the signature.
At Frontière, the machine investigates, structures, synthesises; it never assesses a person, and no decision is automated. Judgment remains human, committed, signed — which is what makes it defensible before your board and accountable if contested.
A conversation, a situation, a reading.
Alice Arnaud · Frontière — Marseille, France · alice@frontiere.ai
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