Devoted to intelligence — in all its forms.
The intelligence of markets: mergers and acquisitions analysis in investment banking — Goldman Sachs, Rothschild & Cie, Hawkpoint (2011-2012). Of hypergrowth: business development at Rocket Internet (2014-2015). Of organisations: the digital transformation of MAIF — and applied work, at the frontier, on data, blockchain and AI. Of people: executive search and leadership advisory — where the reading that became our human capital assessment matrix was forged. Of machines: Frontière.
Sciences Po · HEC · Marseille — France & international
portrait by Andrea Graziosi — Studio Voo · Sky Center, Tour La Marseillaise, Marseille
Mergers and acquisitions analysis in investment banking — Goldman Sachs, Rothschild & Cie, Hawkpoint (2011-2012).
Business development at Rocket Internet, where extreme growth is structured to the highest standard of strategic execution.
The digital transformation of MAIF — and applied work, at the frontier, on data, blockchain and AI.
Executive search and leadership advisory, independently and then within a search and leadership advisory firm — where the reading that became our human capital assessment matrix was forged.
Frontière.
Alice Arnaud thinks in systems — which is where teams, organisations and decisions become legible. 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.
One thread runs through these steps: human-centred design. Designing not what the technology allows, but what the person deciding actually needs — a matching algorithm built from the outset to protect the data, a personal-data governance handed back to the people it concerns, and today a decision space where an executive finds, exactly where it should be, what allows them to decide. The material changes; the question does not: who will use this, and to decide what?
Where a judgment is learned.
The language of the deal
Trained in investment banking — Goldman Sachs in London, Rothschild & Cie and Hawkpoint in Paris — in mergers and acquisitions analysis: valuations, LBO and merger models, information memoranda, management presentations. Long enough to learn how a transaction is built, defended and sold.
Hypergrowth, from the inside
Three roles in eighteen months within the Rocket Internet group. SEO Country Manager for France and Spain at Westwing, from Munich, recruiting and training a team of six. Project Lead for Westwing in Paris, alongside country management. Then Deputy Head of Sourcing at Lazada in Manila, leading a team of more than ten, where she put in place supplier evaluation and working-capital control. Scale, speed and execution — across three continents.
Capital and data
Digital strategist to the chief digital officer of MAIF, in the innovation division. She formalised the corporate venture strategy of MAIF Avenir — €125m — and carried two investments through to execution. She led the design of the group’s data and artificial intelligence strategy. She represented the insurer and its fund on the boards of an industry blockchain consortium and of a venture capital fund. She ran a programme on the ethical governance of personal data — an approach designed around the person concerned rather than around the system — with a foundation and several large groups.
Decision mandates
Independent advisory, on short and committing engagements: the commercial and monetisation strategy of a media launch, through to its regional editions; the positioning of European players in a defence market; the strategic case for a candidacy to succeed a chief executive in large-scale retail; the risk framing of a personal-data programme built privacy by design, as GDPR came into force. Subjects where the question asked was never quite the right one.
The company, from the other side
Founding and running a quick-commerce company, from the first customer to its own brand. What a decision costs when it is your own that is committed.
Assessing leaders
Executive search and leadership advisory, independently and then within a search and leadership advisory firm. This is where the reading that became our human capital assessment matrix was forged.
Frontière
The practice that puts the frontier of artificial intelligence in the service of one thing: de-risking the human variable in capital decisions.
Sciences Po Paris — master’s in finance and corporate strategy. HEC Paris — MSc in entrepreneurship, with a thesis on start-up studios and the Rocket Internet model. An exchange at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo.
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 Frontière works.
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.
The practice — what we are. A place where things are made one at a time, where nothing comes out of a catalogue, and where the hand that designs is the hand that signs.
Frontière is the brand and the promise. The Goban reads, the Tesuji investigates, the Kifu records.
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 fuseki “human capital assessment” reads a leadership team as a system, the fuseki “public office campaign” reads a campaign, and each family of decision calls for its own, designed at the opening of the engagement, tested against precedent, then added to the repertoire.
Kifu (棋譜) — the record of the game: every move set down, in the order it was played. It is the name your decision space carries — not a report to be filed, but a game that stays open, and can be replayed.
Okame hachimoku — the onlooker sees eight moves ahead. The game is open; the skilful 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. Our line is invariant: the machine never assesses a person · no decision is automated · the process is consented to and its findings returned · every conclusion is signed. 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
Book 30 minutes