Anyone with a pair of VR glasses has probably heard of Painting VR. Everyone else, meet Wim Reygaert of Oisoi, the Startup Campus resident behind the wildly successful virtual painter's studio.

“I just got the go on a mega partnership with Meta - something I’ve been working on for months,” Wim Reygaert almost immediately kicks off our conversation. “[But with that] I’ve been hanging on the phone from seven o’clock this morning. Our investors want to know all about it.” Wim admits that keeping everyone happy at this stage of his startup is not always a simple task. “But I am well-surrounded. And not just by savvy lawyers. I also get advice from the other Wintercircus Startup Campus residents.”

With Oisoi, Wim Reygaert was among the first batch of companies to move into the Startup Campus in September 2024. When asked if he could have used a place like this earlier, including the support that comes with it, the former frontman of the metal band Drums Are for Parades responds that he thrives “in situations where no one believes in me. I steered our first investment round myself - not hindered by much knowledge, just based on gut feeling. I turned into the pit bull I was as a musician: sheer fury! Clearly, I no longer do stuff like that myself, but I think it was good that we had to fight to get Oisoi off the ground and prove our worth. So, when we applied for the Startup Campus, we had already made some sales; we were already in contact with Meta; there were actual reasons to let us in. Because this is not just a place for thinkers, but also for doers.”

In case you’re starting to wonder what Oisoi does, the company is behind the extremely popular simulation tool Painting VR, a digital studio that perfectly imitates an immense palette of painting techniques. Like a flight simulator, but for creatives. “It’s funny that you make that comparison,” says Wim,” because we started with things like flight simulation.” The whole story is that the entrepreneur began his career as a film director, “which in Belgium means that you mostly shoot commercials. Apart from the fact that they always force you to sell your soul, I saw budgets decreasing year after year. So, I started looking into the tech world, where VR drew my attention - a visual medium involving storytelling. I ended up shooting one more commercial for an insurance company on the condition that it had a VR component. And with that money and experience, I started Oisoi in 2018.”

It should probably come as no surprise from someone in TV advertising, but even that startup initially involved some creative storytelling—and set design. “I rented a super fancy office in Ghent for a month and invited a bunch of developer friends to work from there. They were working on their own projects, many of which had nothing to do with VR, but the companies I invited over to pitch VR projects to didn’t know that. Long story short, that’s when the VIVES college asked us to create an Airbus 320 cockpit in VR to train aircraft technicians with.”

Cool, but Wim craved for more. “During Covid, my partner Xander Clerckx started working on a painting simulation. As soon as we got something that worked, we put it up on the App Lab for $10 - the non-curated version of the Meta Store. In no time, Painting VR was downloaded over ten thousand times, and we got an email from Meta asking us to develop it further and become a launch partner of its VR headset Meta Quest Pro.”

That was a couple of years ago, but Meta continues to support Painting VR. And not just Meta. “In the world of VR, we are competing at the highest level,” says Wim. “There is much interest from Silicon Valley.” Of course, no one dares to predict when the big VR breakthrough will happen anymore. “But make no mistake, this is already a business,” counters the entrepreneur. “VR is venturing into education, airlines are offering it in business class, and Gorilla Tag recently became the first VR game to generate a hundred million in sales.”

None of this is to say that there aren’t any more obstacles for Oisoi on the road to (even more) success. “We are still not profitable,” Wim explains,” and I have to keep thinking six months ahead. How many salaries can I pay in six months? And who do we need to hire to get there? I constantly live with a best-case, middle-case, and worst-case scenario in my head.”

The still relatively inexperienced entrepreneur admits that is quite challenging: “It causes you to have a split personality,” Wim jokes. “Fortunately, I constantly run into people at the Startup Campus who are going through precisely the same thing. And just that is so valuable, those ten-minute chats at the coffee machine. As a matter of fact, let’s call ourselves what we are: a self-help group. Only when you experience this yourself do you really know what it’s like.”

But it often goes far beyond that, too. “There is so much technical, legal, and organizational knowledge in this building that there is always someone to turn to with a problem - no matter how specific. Wintercircus is like a living library. Or a human Google.” Though Wim also has some constructive criticism. “I feel we should all be a little more rock and roll. And I say that with the greatest respect for everyone here! Together, we form an unbelievable microcosm of technology. But impact partners like Nerdlab and Voem, who work at the intersection of society, art, and technology, should get the opportunity to challenge us even more. We should really allow them to be a fly in the ointment because I cannot stress enough how much the tech world needs a kick in the butt from time to time.”