Alain is CEO of data company Weborama and a widely recognized entrepreneur. 

 

Passionate about innovation, Alain has been working on precursory ideas in the field of data for the last 20 years. In 1999, he co-founded Startup Avenue, the first private incubator in France. As early as in 2002, when the phrase ‘Big Data’ hadn’t yet sprawled across all sectors, he has been working on the first marketing-centric database of profiles. Although ahead of its time, this hyper-personalized approach proved a key asset Alain has ever since been nurturing and leveraging by adding successive cutting-edge tech layers; such as ad targeting capabilities, data management platform, semantics capabilities, as well as artificial intelligence before the rise of the current AI craze.

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At Ycor, he intends to accelerate along this trailblazing path, notably on privacy and personal data protection – a burning topic he wrote about in 2010 in his book ‘Tracking Big Brother’.

 

This innovating mindset serves a long-term motto: build and grow operations and businesses. Having started his career as Head of Trading at Sucden (Sucres et Denrées), one of the biggest commodity players globally, Alain soon after founded his own commodity trading venture in Russia, to import and distribute commodities. A few years later and despite the dot-com bubble burst, Startup Avenue stuck to its mission: build from scratch or help existing ventures to grow, working hard with them. An enthusiastic believer in Weborama’s strong growth potential, Startup Avenue co-invested in 2005, became the majority shareholder and revamped the business model from bottom to ceiling, paving the way for the IPO in 2006. Under Alain's leadership, Weborama has grown to 300 data experts working on 1.3 billion scored personas thanks to corpora expertise and semantic AI capabilities. 

 

Alain is resolute and optimistic, convinced that science, intellectual rigor and business sweat can help solving problems. He is an alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Paris' Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées.