About

Jean-Michel Planche

Thirty years asking one question. What does a human actually need — before the technology decides for them?

The one in the middle

In the nineties, telecoms sold networks. With Oléane, we started from the other end — what people actually wanted to do with this new thing called the internet — and made the network follow. Starting from the human is how you disrupt an industry that thinks in infrastructure.

Then Witbe. The whole industry measured servers, bandwidth, signals. We measured the only thing that matters: the quality actually delivered to a human — the real video, on the real screen, as really watched.

Same method, every time. People call it user-centric; I call it refusing the industry’s starting point. Rethink the problem from the beginning — top-down, from the human. Never bottom-up, from the machine.

The outer turn of the spiral

Photography is my first passion, and its industry is the most bottom-up I know: camera → file → folder → software. Nobody starts from the other end — a person, a memory, a moment that deserves to stay alive. That is the outer turn of the spiral. It is called Cull Me uP.

If you shoot, build or think for a living, I would genuinely like to know what you think.

— JMP · New York

The record

1965 — born. “That is when the trouble starts.”

1989 — 1991 · Apysoft — the first software, where he learns that a program is only worth the person it serves.

1991 — 1993 · Wimsea — one of the first NeXT Centers in France, built around Steve Jobs’ NeXT Computer.

1991 — 1998 · Oléane — founder of France’s first professional internet service provider.

1998 — 2000 · France Telecom — after Oléane was acquired, until it was fully absorbed.

2000 — 2024 · Tancred Venture — twenty-four years investing and standing alongside.

since 2000 · Witbe — creator of a category: measuring the quality actually delivered to a human being.

since 2026 · Just a Moment — the moment itself. Where moments begin.

since 2026 · Cull Me uP — photography, rebuilt from the moment. Where they stay alive.