Jean-Christophe Lavocat
Fractional COO & Head of Data (Available)

Helping founders run their company on clear metrics, reliable processes and practical AI.

Drawing on 15 years as VP Data, Head of Growth and RevOps, across Europe and the US, I work with startups and scale-ups (20–250 people) that have outgrown the way they're run.

I step in as a fractional COO or a fractional Head of Data, depending on what's missing: an operating rhythm the leadership team can rely on, or the data foundations it runs on. Either way, I leave behind a system, and often a team, that keeps running without me.

Jean-Christophe Lavocat

Companies I've worked with (usually reporting to the CEO, or the CMO / VP Sales)

Two ways I can help

Same background, two kinds of missions. Many companies need a bit of both: the numbers are how I run operations, and operations are what the numbers are for.

Fractional COO

When the company has outgrown the way it's run

Growth has put more decisions on your desk than one person can carry, leadership meetings debate whose numbers are right, and decisions get lost between two meetings.

  • An operating rhythm: a leadership review on a short scorecard, with every decision followed up.
  • Numbers with a lever: metrics each team can actually move, with one owner each.
  • Processes that hold without you: written down, owned, with AI taking over the repetitive work.

Sprint of 4–6 weeks, part-time, or advisory

How COO missions work →
Fractional Head of Data

When you need a data function, not yet a full-time hire

Each team has its own numbers, nobody owns the data, and spend scales faster than your ability to measure it.

  • A data stack that holds up: warehouse, transformation layer and pipelines, not a pile of scripts.
  • Numbers the board trusts: KPIs with one definition each, and dashboards that survive the exec team.
  • A team, not a dependency: someone I hired or trained keeps it running without me.

3–6 months, remote-first

How Head of Data missions work →

Track record — 52 Entertainment

VP Data & Growth — building the data function from scratch, with a seat on the executive committee.

250employees
€140Mrevenue
8business units
2 → 10team scaled

8 business units, 8 different tech stacks, no shared data language. I built the warehouse (BigQuery), analytics engineering (dbt), BI (Looker) and orchestration (Prefect); ~60 dashboards across product, marketing, finance and exec reporting; LTV models feeding marketing investment; and a team I recruited and managed from 2 to 10 people.

As a member of the executive committee, I also sat in the leadership meeting every two weeks, and reviewed each business unit's numbers monthly with its management team.

The hard part wasn't the warehouse. It was building one semantic layer that 8 different businesses could all trust and use.
Read the full case study →

Latest writing

Essays on running a company on clear metrics, data teams and operating rhythm.

All posts →

A bit more background

Where I've been building data, growth and products.

. Toulon (FRANCE)
31 Dec 2014 - 10:00 AM

Before startups, I did a PhD in nano-physics (active photonic devices in liquid-crystal elastomers, 2014) and an MSc in theoretical physics (quantum perceptrons, 2009).

PhD thesis PDF, 17 MB MSc thesis PDF, 0.6 MB

Full history on LinkedIn →

Let's find out if it's a fit

The fastest way in is the short form on the page that matches what you need — a few questions so the call is actually useful, not a sales pitch. Prefer to just write? That works too.