Jean de La Rochebrochard

Who they are

Jean de La Rochebrochard is Senior Director and Head of Strategic Partnerships & Global Engagement at APCO Worldwide — co-founded New Wave, a €56M seed fund, alongside Xavier Niel, and authored the book 'Human Machine'.

Person

Jean started at Sciences Po Lille with an MA in International Relations, then moved through international institutions — the OECD as Deputy Head of the Forum, UNESCO as a consultant, and the French Embassy in India as a junior project manager — before pivoting hard into the French tech scene. At TheFamily he was a partner, building the startup support model that Oussama Ammar and Alice Zagury made famous in Paris. That led him to Kima Ventures, where he ran the fund as Managing Director for years as Xavier Niel's chief dealmaker, writing small checks at high velocity into early-stage companies globally. In 2020 he co-founded New Wave alongside Pia d'Iribarne, Antoine Martin, and Alex Yazdi — a €56M seed fund writing tickets between €500K and €2M. He joined APCO Worldwide in 2022 when the firm was expanding its Strategic Partnerships & Global Engagement practice, and now leads that practice as Senior Director. He has a Wharton Global Management Academy credential and an INSEAD coaching certificate alongside his Sorbonne corporate finance master's. The through-line is moving between global institutions and early-stage capital, always at the junction of influence networks and money. He writes a Substack called 'Venture Prose' at 2lr.substack.com on VC investing, founder psychology, and startup ecosystems, posts on Medium at medium.com/@2lr, contributes to Diplomatic Courier on the global agenda, authored the book 'Human Machine', and Possibly — has built a custom GPT based on his own content.

Company

APCO Worldwide, where Jean has led the Strategic Partnerships & Global Engagement practice since 2022, is a global advisory and advocacy firm with approximately 1,200 employees across 35 locations as of 2024. Its most recent disclosed expansion move was the 2023 acquisition of three firms — Gagen MacDonald, Camarco, and NGC International Advisory — to broaden its advisory and communications reach globally. CEO Brad Staples has publicly framed 2025 strategy around geopolitical trade positioning, particularly India's role in shifting global supply chains. APCO operates heavily in complex regulatory environments — healthcare communications, public affairs, and multilateral-facing advisory — putting it squarely in the path of the geopolitical volatility reshaping corporate communications mandates.

Market

APCO Worldwide competes against Hill+Knowlton Strategies, FTI Consulting, and PRgloo across corporate communications, crisis management, and regulatory advisory. The firm differentiates on multilateral and government-facing work — a segment under increasing demand as geopolitical fragmentation, digital sovereignty debates, and supply chain realignments push multinationals to seek dedicated political risk counsel.

Network

Jean's most consequential relationship is with Xavier Niel — founder of Free, 42, and Station F — who is the main investor behind Kima Ventures and has been Jean's principal since around 2015. Through New Wave, he is closely networked with co-founders Pia d'Iribarne, Antoine Martin, and Alex Yazdi. His APCO orbit connects him to multilateral bodies including the United Nations Foundation, MIT Solve, and the World Economic Forum via APCO's International Advisory Council.

Xavier Niel· Founder of Free, 42, Station F; main investor at Kima Ventures
Pia d'Iribarne· Co-founder, New Wave
Antoine Martin· Co-founder, New Wave
Alex Yazdi· Co-founder, New Wave

How they likely show up

Career spanning OECD, UNESCO, Embassy of France, TheFamily, Kima Ventures, and APCO → moves fluidly between institutional and startup worlds; probably translates across registers better than most.
Co-founded New Wave while already running Kima Ventures → high agency, runs parallel tracks rather than waiting for clean transitions.
Active across Substack, Medium, Diplomatic Courier, and a book → comfortable building a public intellectual identity; likely engages more deeply with people who've read his work.
Holds both a Wharton Global Management Academy credential and an INSEAD coaching certificate alongside a corporate finance master's → invests deliberately in leadership craft, not just deal-making skills.
Possibly — hybrid role pattern (operator + investor + writer simultaneously) → may find purely execution-focused or purely advisory roles too narrow; gravitates toward boundary-spanning mandates.
Triathlon and Ironman training noted as a personal interest → likely brings a structured, long-horizon discipline to his work; probably responds to people who can talk about sustained effort over results.

Conversation tips

→ Reference 'Venture Prose' or a specific Medium post by name — he publishes consistently enough that knowing his actual arguments will signal genuine preparation.
→ Ask about the Kima-to-APCO transition — moving from high-velocity seed investing to institutional advisory is a specific arc worth unpacking on his terms.
→ He spoke publicly in 2017 about succeeding outside Paris; regional vs. capital dynamics in European tech is a thread he's thought about and may still hold views on.
→ Don't skip New Wave — he built it in 2020 alongside his other commitments, which says something deliberate about where he puts conviction capital.
→ His coaching certificate from INSEAD suggests he thinks carefully about how people develop; framing questions around talent and leadership will land better than pure strategy talk.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on 'Venture Prose' — his Substack at 2lr.substack.com on VC investing and founder psychology is the clearest window into how he currently thinks, and naming a specific piece signals you went there.
Mention New Wave: a €56M seed fund he co-founded in 2020 while still at Kima, writing €500K–€2M checks — it's the move that shows he wasn't content just deploying someone else's capital.
Reference 'Human Machine', the book he authored — it's a named, concrete output most people overlook when they only look at his investment roles.

Discovery questions

How has moving from seed investing at Kima to strategic advisory at APCO changed the way you think about what makes founders and companies actually influential?
New Wave was launched in 2020 — what thesis drove you to build a new fund structure rather than scale what you had at Kima, and has that thesis held?
Your Substack covers founder psychology alongside market dynamics — when you're advising clients at APCO on strategic partnerships, how much of that is fundamentally a people problem versus a structural one?

Avoid

Don't lead with surface-level questions about 'the French tech ecosystem' as a topic — he's been a practitioner inside it for over a decade and will expect you to come in with a more specific angle.

Make it yours