About — Seoul, KR
Ombrise is one person.
That is the whole structure.
What that means in practice, what I have shipped, and how I work.
What Ombrise is
Griotta has a mission. Ombrise has a tendency.
Ombrise is the company-shaped container for things I think should exist.
It is not a studio with staff, an agency, or a holding company. They don't share a market or a business model. They share a mind.
Who I am
Julien Poulain. French, based in Seoul.
I spent 2022 to 2025 in enterprise sales at BASF across EMEA, which is where I learned how real companies actually buy, decide and stall. Then I started building instead.
I design, build and ship on my own: product decisions, interface, engineering, release. There is no team behind this, and I would rather say that plainly than imply otherwise.
What I've shipped
Two apps shipped, one company co-founded.
Griotta is a behavioural money app for iPhone. It uses Apple Screen Time to step in before the shopping apps you choose will open, with a short breathing pause, then offers three outcomes of equal weight: walk away, plan it, or buy now. There is no account, no bank connection and no transaction tracking. Designed, built and shipped solo, and live on iOS.
Circa is a date-planning app for iPhone: real stops, sensible pacing, walkable routes and a quiet backup. Thirteen days separate the earliest surviving source from the successful App Store upload. It is finished and currently unlisted, because I took it down to put everything into Griotta.
Cazen is a rights vault that records who owns what on collaborative work before it ships. I co-founded it in early 2026. It is finished and currently unlisted, for the same reason.
How I work
Ship first, and build for month six.
The deliverable is software in production, not a document about software. I would rather show a working thing in the second week than describe a better one for a month.
AI goes in where it improves a workflow that already exists, and nowhere else. Most weeks that means nowhere.
Whatever I build has to still be usable long after launch day, by whoever is running it then, including me.
The record
- Name
- Julien Poulain
- Based
- Seoul, KR
- Nationality
- French
- Before
- Enterprise sales, BASF, EMEA, 2022 to 2025
- Works
- Alone: product decisions, interface, engineering, release
- Shipped
- Griotta, iOS, 2026. Circa, iOS, 2026
- Co-founded
- Cazen, 2026, shipped and unlisted
If I can’t leave a thought alone, I make it real.
Some become products. Some become research. Some only needed to exist once.
Griotta is the one I’m building now.
julien@ombrise.com