At the end of this year, Philiep De Sutter, founder of RouteYou and current CEO, is retiring. His successor is Sibran Lens, a familiar face at Mediahuis and RouteYou's Product Manager since 2023. Sibran started as CEO on May 1st. Philiep will stay on board until the end of 2026 to ensure a smooth transition.
Sibran built up more than 15 years of experience in the media sector, working at VRT, Medialaan, and for 11 years at Mediahuis.
In 2023, Sibran took on a dual role at RouteYou: growing the platform and integrating RouteYou as an extra perk for subscribers of Mediahuis news brands. Since then, RouteYou has made major strides, including the launch of a native app. Today, RouteYou has over 950,000 unique app downloads. One in five Mediahuis subscribers has activated their RouteYou perk—and in Belgium, that's as high as 30%. In 2025, this nearly doubled the number of paying users.
As CEO, Sibran will focus on structural growth in 2026, investing in route quality, sustainable B2B partnerships, and four growth levers: acquisition, conversion, retention, and reactivation.
Philiep De Sutter - “After more than twenty years at the helm, this feels like the perfect time to pass the torch. With Sibran Lens, RouteYou gets a CEO who knows the product, the organization, and the Mediahuis context inside out. I have full confidence that he will steer RouteYou's continued growth in the right direction.”
Sibran Lens - “Over the years, RouteYou has really started to feel like home. Everything I've learned throughout my career comes together here. I'm proud of what we've built and the impact it's making today. In my role as CEO, I want to keep growing RouteYou—moving forward both literally and figuratively. And yeah, I've never walked or cycled as much as I have since starting at RouteYou!”