Peter De Paepe

Head of VRT Sandbox

Peter De Paepe is Head of VRT Sandbox, the accelerator of VRT, boosting media-innovation together with startups and scale-ups. He's also a member of the CVC-fund 'Media Invest Flanders', investing in media-scale-ups in Brussels and Flanders (=joint venture VRT + PMV).

Studied Radio and Audiovisual Arts in Brussels, and having more than 20 years of experience in making media, Peter is now expert in open-innovation, digital-strategy, corporate acceleration and corporate venturing.

He currently runs together with his VRT Sandbox-team- a European Accelerator for Media, called "STADIEM” (H2020) together with partners Next Media Accelerator (GER), Media City Bergen (NW), Storytek (EST) and EBU (EU). The aim is to build 'Next Generation Media Products' around web3, youth formats, gaming, fighting misinformation, automated content flows and synthetic voices.

He ‘s also member of the investment-team of Media Invest Flanders, a CVC-fund of 10 million where VRT and PMV (Participatie Maatschappij Vlaanderen) join forces and expertise, to invest in promising companies in the Flemish media ecosystem. To this end, Peter helped setting up this VC. First investments were Cyborn (3D-animation studio), Cybernetic Walrus (Game studio) and THEOtechnologies (universal video player used by BBC, Telenet, KPN, NBC,...)

Started as reporter, presenter and producer at Radio 2, after 8 years he moved to one of the youth-channel of VRT, Studio Brussels. He presented program’s as ‘De Maxx’ and ‘Was het nu 80, 90, 2000’ and was final editor. Some time later, Peter became Program Manager of MNM, and was responsible for the station sound. He guided MNM through some rough see and helped them grow to what is is today: one of the most popular youth-radio stations (focus 16-35y) with a wide divers audience.

Peter always will have a heart for radio, but is at his best at the crosspoint of media-content, entrepreuneurship and mediatech.

During winter you ‘ll find Peter on his ski’s in the Alps. In his free time he loves small trails to mountain bike or some crazy mini-football on sundays.