Effy Group
800M€
turnaround. Marketplace scaled with 25% Dev/IT budget freed.
Operating Partner · Senior Advisor
Four waves.
Same weapons.
Faster cycle.
Web, mobile, data, AI. The rules of value creation have not changed in 27 years.
The clock has. The choice of battles has become the only strategy that matters.
5
Senior mandates delivered
800M€
Group restructured in 18 months
27y
Digital transformation experience
40+
Countries operated (John Paul/Accor)
About
About Ikigai
David Ohayon is an Operating Partner and Senior Advisor based in Paris, specializing in AI and digital transformation for PE-backed mid-caps, family-owned groups and growth participations across Europe.
Five Comex mandates delivered. Former Boston Consulting Group, INSEAD Global Executive MBA, CentraleSupélec engineering. Available for Operating Partner mandates with PE funds, Interim CDO/CTO/Chief Transformation Officer roles, and Senior Advisory for boards and CEOs.
Geographies Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain).
Trusted by leading executives & funds
Why now
Two pressures
are converging.
A 36-month window is opening on European mid-cap capital. Most companies will not catch up alone.
Two structural pressures are reshaping European mid-cap capital, at the same time.
一
Pressure 01 · The PE exit window
In 2025, French PE funds held over 8,400 portfolio companies, with 1,232 exit operations recorded. The window is reopening, but on a market where generative AI is rewriting unit economics in services and marketplace businesses. Acquisitions made between 2018 and 2022 must rebuild their operating model, or accept a meaningful discount at exit.
Source: France Invest, 2025
二
Pressure 02 · The Silver Tsunami
More than 500,000 French company leaders will retire in the next decade. One in four CEOs is already over 60 (BPI). Transmission has just been declared a national economic priority. This pressure will hand thousands of profitable but digitally immature businesses to new investors, family successors, and PE buyers.
Source: BPI France, French government, 2026
What this means
The same problem.
Two populations.
Both populations face the same problem. They have a 36-month window to rewire their operating model. AI is the accelerator, not the question. Few have the internal C-suite capacity to carry it without external operating support.
Ikigai exists to do this work, with the funds, the families, and the management teams that hold the asset.
Chapter II · The cycle
Same rules.
Faster clock.
Four technology waves. The disciplines that win are unchanged.
The penalty for picking the wrong battle has become structural.
Each wave compressed the time available to react. The strategic discipline did not change. Customer focus, kill-rate, operating clarity, capability density. What changed is the speed at which a wrong call shows up in the multiple at exit.
2000
Web
5 years
Time required for a serious digital transformation programme.
2010
Mobile
3 years
Channels rebuilt, app-first journeys, omnichannel data foundations.
2018
Data & cloud
2 years
Modern data stacks, cloud-native architectures, real-time analytics.
2026
AI
Quarters
Operating model rewrites running in 90-day cycles. No tolerance for misallocated capital.
The discipline that wins is the same. What has changed is how quickly the absence of discipline becomes visible in the P&L.
Selected outcomes
Five Comex mandates.
Real businesses. Real numbers.
John Paul · Accor
100 → 1,000
FTEs. Revenue from 10M€ to 50M€. Acquired by Accor for 150M$.
$150M exitAltavia Tech
40+ countries
AI governance framework. 80M€ programme designed across 70+ BUs.
Chapter I · Method
Every engagement starts
with the same diagnostic.
The Ikigai 4Q Method. Four quadrants, one shared question for the management team and the shareholders: where is the bottleneck, really?
Chapter III · AI Transformation AI is not a strategy. It is a multiplier.
AI is not a strategy. It is a multiplier.
And multipliers only work on a foundation that protects the multiple at exit.
Every organisation is now under pressure to adopt AI. Most are doing it backwards,
choosing tools before understanding the problem, automating the wrong processes,
deploying solutions their teams will never use.
The companies that will win are those that treat AI as an operating model question first,
and a technology question second.
- Identify the right use cases
- Cut through the hype
- Deploy at a pace your organisation can absorb
Chapter IV · The discipline
What I do
that most do not.
Three operating disciplines that protect the multiple at exit. Built across four technology waves and five Comex mandates.
Not glamorous. Defendable in due diligence.
01
Kill more initiatives than I launch.
The discipline is not glamorous. It is what protects the multiple. Most businesses run too many initiatives. A significant share should stop. The survivors get capital, attention, and managerial bandwidth.
02
Tie every initiative to a P&L line within 90 days.
No P&L owner, no project. Period. The discipline PE built over thirty years on capital allocation applies, with no exception, to AI allocation.
03
Remove layers before deploying tools.
Tools amplify what is already there. Bad org charts amplified by AI become disasters. Repurpose, do not eliminate. The talent that handled the repetitive work knows the customer, the product, and the operations.
Get in touch
Every transformation starts
with a conversation.
No pitch. No deck. Just a conversation about your business.
Discuss your situation →