The AR Show: Brad Scoggin (ArborXR) on Enabling VR/AR at Scale as a Non-Tech Founder

7:58PM Feb 14, 2022

Speakers:

Jason McDowall

Brad Scoggin

Keywords:

vr

headsets

cave

enterprise

big

company

people

arcade

xr

devices

founder

hear

springboard

oklahoma

months

location based entertainment

ar

run

scale

thought

Welcome to the AR show where I dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology, the use cases and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall.

Today's conversation is with Brad Skoggin Brett is the co founder and CEO of ArborXR an XR device management solution for enterprises that currently is being used by more than 400 companies and educational institutions around the world. Brad and his team found companies are using consumer hardware such as the Oculus Quest, but don't have the right enterprise software to help them scale as they go from pilot projects to larger deployments. The problems addressed by ArborXR are an extension of the problems Brad saw as the co founder and CEO of Springboard VR. Springboard was a venue management solution for VR arcades, which Brad successfully sold during the height of the pandemic.

In this conversation, we discussed Brad's insights on how to thrive as a non tech founder pushing the boundaries of VR and AR.

I'm not a VR enthusiast. I'm not a technology enthusiast. I'm an impact enthusiast. And so from the very beginning, this deep why that we want to help shape this massive new technology for good. And I know you think good news, we're hard to find good. But at high level, you know, so that's driven everything for five years, we saw that play out several different ways in location based entertainment, where we are today is that we have a very strong position that XR, whether it's AR VR, is a tool. And it's a tool that should improve our quality of life. It should not be a place where we escape, it should make our work or travel, or learning our training more efficient, so that we actually have more time in the real world for meaningful connection versus escaping.

Brad goes on to share some excellent insights into scaling up and down the startup in VR AR as well as the importance of managing pace, creating transparency, writing the creative tension between focus and experimentation, and successfully building out a remote team. And of course, we get into the details of our projects are we're Brad shares that they have multiple deployments of over 10,000 headsets. As a reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show.com. Let's dive in.

Brad, you have a unique hobby, spelunking? How do you get into caving in what was one of the most memorable experiences you had there?

You know, I think I always enjoyed being outside. But I liked adventure, more than just hiking, hiking was kind of boring. And so I grew up about 30 minutes from a state park in Oklahoma. And state parks are awesome, because there's no rules. So we would go there, and you could just do whatever you wanted. And there were a few caves in the state park that I would go to as a kid. And as I got older, I heard that there were some secret caves in the state park. So it was the winter break of my junior year of college, and my buddy and I said, Okay, we're going to do the research. And we're going to find these these secret caves. So we went on the forums, this is like 2008.

And we did all this research, we found this guy who lives in his band near the State Park, who had been there for years. And he kind of gave us some of the background and information. And we found or we heard or learned that there was a cave that was there was a river or a creek that ran through this state park with a waterfall and supposedly there was a hidden cave that was the source of the creek. And so we were really excited. We did all this research. And so we said okay, we're gonna go hike to the source of this, this creek. So we hiked this pray about an hour hike outside of the park, actually. And we got to the cave, and we were so you know, pumped. Okay, we found this cave. Very few people know about it. So we go into the cave. And we always love to explore kind of every nook and cranny. And so we went pretty far back into the cave, you kind of get disoriented a bit, but it was it was big enough to walk for a while. And then we got to, we came to some water and we were pretty deep in the cave. So we take off our shoes hop in the water, and we're swimming for a bit. The water got towards about two or three feet from the ceiling. So we kind of go through this small opening into a bigger room that was full of water. Really, really cool. And we get further back and the the water ends. And so we walk up into this room. And in this room, there's a hole in the ceiling. And so we're thinking, okay, awesome, like we'll climb I mean, we're pretty far back. It's almost dark we got we have an hour hike back to our cars. So we'll climb out this hole, we'll mark it somehow with our GPS. GPS does not work in the cave, but it works out of the gate, one market and then we'll come back the next day and we'll continue going deeper into the cave. So I try first to climb up to the top of the hole and I can't I fall down. So my buddy said okay, let me try so he climbs up and he gets up there and just as he sticks his head out through this way it's about a three foot wide hole at the top of the this room We hear something that sounds like a spray paint can. And it's a rattlesnake that's hibernating just below like the entrance to the cave. So he flipped, you know, we freak out, he falls back down, we jump in the water and, and swim out as fast as we can. And for whatever reason, our mindset was always that the deeper you get into the cave, the safer you are from snakes and things because there's nothing to eat, there's no water. But now we're deep in a cave in water. And it just, you know, it ran to a snake. So we were freaking out, so we get out. But we're still thinking, Okay, we have to figure out where that hole is, because we're gonna go kill the snake, we're going to repel him from the roof. And we're going to continue exploring the cave. And so we spent as much time as we could before dark looking for that entrance, we just couldn't find it. It's for you, again, you get disoriented when you're underground versus where the hole is on the top. And so we left and we were trying to think of a blanket, how can we figure out where this entrance is. And we ran through several dumb scenarios. And we landed on the dumbest scenario, which we thought was smart at the time. But the idea was, my buddy would he had some fireworks leftover from the Fourth of July, so he was going to take smoke bombs, and a whistle. And we're in college, okay, smoke bombs and a whistle, he would go back into the cave and braved the snake, I would go up top where I thought the entrance was. And first I would listen for the whistle. And if that worked, okay, no smoke bombs necessary. If I don't hear the whistle, he will light a smoke bomb, throw it through the hole in the roof. And then I'll see the smoke and we'll know where the entrance is. And I had a this is Oklahoma, I had a like a spear that we would use to kill the snake and then continue on a journey. So I stayed up there for what feels like 30 minutes or longer. Yeah, he had to go back in there. And I see nothing. I hear nothing.

And I'm standing there waiting. And all of a sudden I see my buddy running up the side of the hill. He's half dressed because we were stripped down to swim through the water. He's like pulling his pants. We don't have a shirt on. And he's freaking out. And I'm like, what, what what happened? What's going on? He said, Oh, you know, Oh, thank God, I went through the smoke bomb. I heard like what sounds like a fire starting. I was like, I haven't seen anything. And a few minutes later, we look over and the whole like side of the hill, there's just smoke billowing. So now we're like, oh crap, we have started a fire. So we sprint over to where the fire is. And there's a fire and it is growing quickly. It's dry. It's Oklahoma. It's windy. And it's like a circle that starts out it's maybe 10 foot across, but it's just rapidly expanding. So we're running around the edge of the fire stomping it out with our feet as fast as we can try to put out the fire because we're in a state park and then we trespass outside of the state park. And just as we would almost get the fire put out, it would hit another bush and light up again. So we tried this for like 30 minutes, and it's just growing and growing. So finally, I'm like, man, we have to call somebody like this is we don't want to call anybody getting at what we've done. But I had a GPS I knew exactly where we were. And we were pretty deep. So I call 911. I give them the GPS coordinates. I had this like big moment of truth, because if you ever call 911, they asked you what is your name, and obviously they have your phone number. But you're kind of like I said, I didn't say I started a forest fire. I said I'm reporting a forest fire. I gave them my first name only. And then I hung up. And we waited for an hour continuing to try to put the fire out ourselves as continue to grow. And nobody came again. It was almost dark. So we're like we just left we had to hike back. And as we get back to our car, you know, an hour later, we're driving out of the state park, we'd parked at the very back of it. And we come up this hill. And there's the park ranger or one of the park rangers sitting in this truck. Just watching the horizon burn. And we feel terrible. We're scared that mean we smell like smoke, right? Like, well, no, we're going to be in trouble. And so yeah, for months after that, anytime I would hear a siren, I would freak out that I had been caught for you know, or if I got a phone call that was from an unknown number that somebody was calling me to question me, but I never saw anything about it on the news. I never heard anything about it. And we never went back. So that was kind of like my last caving experience. It was getting more and more dangerous. And it was just like this is just become stupid. But I still have this strong desire to go back and go to the top. And it was it was very tempting because because the fire had burned off all the brush. So it would be very easy to find the entrance, right? But we just we didn't do it. And then the the end of the story is that months later, my buddy was in southern Oklahoma doing some climbing, there's some good climbing down there. And he overheard some guys talking who had been indicating. And they talked about that cave that cave had a name called bitter interest cave. It's painted on it. And they said yeah, there's this cave that we see to go to all the time, but there's a rattlesnake pit in it so people quit going there. So anyway, it was it was, it was good that we didn't get hurt worse than that. And I haven't I have not caved other than, you know public caves that you're gonna walk in since then. So

when the insiders when your buddy ran into these climbers who had also we're also cavers, they knew about it, and it was a thing is so well known enough amongst the inner community that they would stay away because the rattlesnake pit,

well, actually, because of the rattlesnake pit. And the other thing that he heard was, we just weren't thinking honestly, which, you know, maybe even sometimes in entrepreneurship, it's good to not think about the dangers and just go. But I guess another issue is that with a torrential downpour that cave fills up with water, which we hadn't thought about. And they also had said that somebody had gone in there scuba diving, which again, we didn't think how deep is it, we just swim across the top. And somebody had died in the cave, doing some cave scuba diving. So overall, it was just not a cave that you should go in and had the name better Enders. And that should have been more of a signal to not enter the cave.

deter Enders, man. What an adventure though. It was awesome. Yeah. And I'm delighted to hear that nobody actually did get hurt.

Nobody got hurt. And as far as we know, you know, forest fires occasionally are good. And so we never heard anything about it being bad for the park or the land or anything.

Yeah. Good. Well, I'm glad you made it out safely. But I'm sorry to hear that was the last the last little gaming experience. Yeah. So growing up in Oklahoma, you find your way, ultimately to California. And several years back as five years back or so you had launched Springboard VR, which I remember hearing about the news all the time around, then it was addressing some challenges faced by location based entertainment, you know, VR, location based entertainment companies. Can you tell me and I guess maybe we'll start with the problem you were addressing with that startup, but also love to hear kind of how you ended up working on that. But what was Springboard VR doing in 2016.

So Springboard came out of upward VR, which was an arcade that we started in Oklahoma City. And the quick background, which is important to the whole trajectory of this thing, is that I had worked in nonprofit for several years after college. And for me, what that did, is it the woken this thing in me of reform and fixing broken systems. And so I stepped out of the nonprofit, just as my wife and I and our kids were moving to California, she was starting her medical practice. And I was excited to start something on my own. And so for me, the why was let's find a system that's broken, that we can go in, do a better job and still make money, so that there wasn't any commitment to any particular field. And we actually almost started a finance company. I went back to Oklahoma, a few months after we'd moved to California to raise money for that company. And while I was in town, it was the fall of 2016. I put on a VR headset for the first time I'd raise money for this finance company all week in the finance company was going to be really boring, but it checked my boxes of reform, you know, treat people better and, and make money. So the last time in town, my buddy, who's now one of our co founders said, hey, you've got to come over and check out this VR headset. So it's okay. You know, I had kids and I just hadn't been into gaming as much as when I was younger. And so I got put on the headset. And I played, he said, he videoed me, it was like he knew it was the genesis of something, my first experience in VR, but I was playing zombie training simulator. And I was just blown away. I had no idea that that the technology was so good at the time. My buddy was sharing stories, even in 2016, about applications and healthcare education. And so my mind is racing, because I'd spent almost seven years in the nonprofit working to reform education in Latin America. And I didn't spend the last three or four months after stepping out of that thinking about how to how do we reform other broken systems, and honestly, being very frustrated. And it's just it's very inefficient to fix a broken system. It's much more efficient to build it right from the beginning. So all this I know is very idealistic. But as I'm in VR, it's like, here's a new tech, here's a new technology, it's going to change the world. It has not been developed yet. Maybe we should get into this, maybe we could have a seat at the table helping shape this new industry for good. Again, very idealistic. And so I left my buddy's house, I was driving back to my in laws where I was staying for the week. My mind's racing, and I had just read. You know, every, every founder story has many points of luck, or at least a few. And good timing, which you could also call luck. I had just so I'm thinking VR VR VR. I'm not really a tech guy. But here's a huge opportunity. How do we get into this space? And I had just read, embarrassing embarrassingly Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My dad gave me the book when I was told But I had a few months of being unemployed. And so I read the book. And I had just I was reading it, I just read the chapter, where Robert Kiyosaki tells a story of when he was a kid, he would get comic books for free from his local library. And then he would charge his buddies to come over to his basement and read comic books. So I just read that put on the VR headset, and some thinking, wow, this was really cool. This was fun. It's pretty expensive setup. If I owned one of these, my friends would definitely pay money to come play VR. So I called back my now co founder in Oklahoma and said, Hey, let's open up an arcade, which wasn't even a thing it was, I don't even know if I said, Okay, I said, let's get some of these, let's get some space. And let's do like, let's charge people to play VR. And but the whole idea for us was, this is a much bigger opportunity. We just, we just need to get in, we need to get in, we need to do a really good job do with excellence. And if we do, hopefully, other opportunities will pop up. And so this was,

this is October, we're about six weeks out from Black Friday, with no experience in any. And so we said, Okay, if we're going to do this, we need to sign here, we need to get really good space, we need to get in by Black Friday, so that we can hopefully leveraged Christmas rush, and then we need to raise the money really quickly. All that fell into place. We opened up an arcade Black Friday, and we had a really good holiday season, which kind of was what led him to springboard but specifically to answer your question with that context of minor background of mine. And this, you know, raising money is a big topic, right? So we had to raise money to launch an arcade, we never launched an arcade. So you do your best to put together a pro forma blend our pro forma, we had planned on a few employees to manage 1010 fives 10 headsets? And so we raise the money, then we get all the gear and we're running through okay, what is our customer experience going to be like? What is the process in store going to be like? And there was this moment of oh, no, we're totally screwed. This is so cumbersome. Getting somebody in and out of VR picking different games, there's no way two employees could manage a full house of 10 customers at once. So we're gonna have to hire more employees, which is going to totally blow our projections. And so really out of necessity to solve our own pain point to not lose money, we built a very early version of springboard to help manage our location. And so Springboard evolved into device management, user management, content management. But in the very beginning, it was just a way to automate people getting in out of content in the headsets without needing the employee to help them to manage 10 headsets in a business setting. And then again, it kind of evolved, definitely evolved into doing the content side of things. But that was the the initial why and we hadn't really, it just again, timing, we got a lot of press, we were we were the I think we maybe were the first arcade in the US. The only other one out there was the third one in Canada camera, the name, but it was the big one that everybody pointed to the time. And we had a really good holiday season. And we kind of came up for air in January and realized, wow, these arcades or whatever they are, are starting to pop up all over the place to kind of fill this void this hole in the market. And they all have the same pain point we'd built this light version, we're looking for a way to have a bigger impact in this new technology. Maybe we should pivot to software.

Was it the same entity that ended up pivoting to do software? Just start something fresh and raise new money for

that? Yeah, so that's a great question. So that as part of our journey, we going into that new year, we want to tell the story. It sounds like we were just so committed to software. Well, for the first three months of the year, we were kind of trying to figure out what do we do we have this arcade that seems like it could be successful if we put some energy toward it. We had a few people reach out to us about franchising, which looking back just sounds ridiculous, aren't what we were thinking we had an arcade for one month, and we were going to franchise it. But at the time, we were seriously considering it. And then there was a software. So we had four or five different like opportunities that felt like, wow, these are all real opportunities. So the idea was, let's get a parent company that then would have all these subs under it. And let's kind of run it all to see which one works, which is very counter to focus on one thing and do one thing well, and that was a tension amongst us for a while. But I'll still say to this day that that's an important tension in where you live on that spectrum or how or that line of tension is so dependent on the market and on timing, because there are definitely times and I look back on our journey where you can't focus on one thing because you don't know what the one thing to focus on. It's and you've got to test multiple things, even if every one of your investors says Focus, focus focus. And so we quick so the way we initially structured it out, but actually it was you know, this whole like parent Corp and and then multiple C's under it which so it kind of just rode the wave from the arcade into the software because the investors into the arcade. I mean, you have to imagine three guys with college degrees saying, Hey, we're gonna start an arcade. And if all of our friends and family thought we were nuts, so people were believing in us and believing that we could turn it into something more than an arcade at the local mall, so that those initial investors carried on into the parent Corp. And then today, we're now down to one quart, there's a lot of mess to clean up. But that was kind of the path that we took in the beginning.

And so you're essentially running four experiments simultaneously, at that point in time ish. Yes. Right. And just see where where the opportunity was going to spring up. Right? Exactly. And you end up selecting springboard, their software focused, you were enabling now, right? The same type of experience that you'd created for yourselves all of the benefits for managing users and devices and the experience the games, the content as well itself as well. How did you now three college guys who weren't quite sure at the outset, what you wanted to do other than focus on reforming, doing something really exceptional in the process? In the course of improving some existing system problem area, it makes money, you find VR? How did you assemble the right team now to execute against what is effectively a very cutting edge technology, and developing some sophisticated software for content management around it?

Yeah, that has been a journey. And throw in the element that none of the three founders are tech, one of the founders had had run a, he was in it, and he'd run an online business before we had some, some experience, there's a lot of unique challenges. Again, there's definitely an element of luck, or there was for us. But early on, we were so focused, and not even knowing that this was the right way to focus, we were so focused on the problem space, and just solving the problems. And even when we made the decision to go springboard, it was really, that's where we feel like we can have the most impact, instead of betting on one or two locations, let's bet on other locations. And but even then, if you remember, 2016, VR felt so volatile, the time, it just felt like in a month or two, everything could change, this whole arcade thing was so brand new, nobody had a clue what the business model was. So even when we decided to make that that pivot or to focus to dial in our focus, we said, Okay, let's do, let's focus on doing two things, just in case we see where this goes, Let's become experts in the problems that our customers have. And let's build a great relationship. So if in six months, this whole thing, you know, shifts, we may have enough relational capital to shift with with it to whatever's next. So that was our mindset, even going into building the team, we initially just outsourced it with a very specific, this is a problem that we need to solve. And again, one of our co founders had had experience doing that. And then from there, we just, we started hiring more engineers. And that's where honestly, there's probably two or three, maybe a handful of big luck moments. But we found our CTO, we didn't know it, he was either our second or third hire. And he's just been key to the whole, the whole journey since then. But there's other things and we can talk about it more, but some of the benefits of having challenges and benefits of being a non tech founder. But that's how we that's how we got started. So our team is fully remote. We've been fully remote from the beginning. Out of necessity, it wasn't a decision, it wasn't a decision to go remote. It was let's just find people wherever they are to build this. And, and so we've always that's just always been who we are.

Yeah, let's come back and talk a bit about more about that in a little bit. Springboard itself, then you ended up that Ben was the winning horse of those initial few racers, his initial few experiments. And you grew that and had a pretty decent installed base across the US across the world of customers. Walk me through the decision process, ultimately to sell Springboard VR and step away from that.

Yeah, that that journey was so fun, exciting, stressful. In the back of our minds, I think we always knew it was just a step to something else. Because we were looking for the really meaningful direct impact in gaming is fun and gaming is it is important. I think arcades are actually really important because a lot of people will put on a VR headset for the first time at the local arcade. They'll go on to do great things in VR. But we just learned so much, we became experts in a very niche problem. And so I still say with high level of confidence, our team is the most experienced in the world solving this specific problem because we've been doing it the longest, but we grew pretty rapidly for the space. We became globally the market leader outside of China, Japan. And what that did for us along the way, we got a lot of experience, but because of where the market was at that time, the consumer market was not growing at the rate that everybody had hoped, which I think was just misguided expectations. Enterprise had not really taken off at all at that point. And so you've got this weird niche of location based VR entertainment that early on, everybody thought was a joke, but it kept growing. And so it was about a year into it. We got mentioned in an online Forbes article, which isn't that big of a deal. But it was just kind of this coming out moment for us. And every major player called us after that over the next time, it was like this joke, like once a week for 10 weeks. And everybody had the same perspective, we don't really think that LBE is a future. But right now it's where the action is. So we want to be present, we want to be learning so that we can be relevant as this thing continues to evolve. So what it did for us is we were a market leader in a small kind of goofy niche space. But it gave us credibility with all the big players for where the market was at, which then led into some big potential partnerships to move outside of location based entertainment. And so over, over the years, again, because we had this interest in stepping outside of just location based entertainment, we did several deep dives into both education and enterprise. And we were just always too early, it was like we were fighting this uphill battle, there was too much friction, because this was also before even the quest, right. So not having a standalone headset in education is really challenging. I mean, similar challenges in an enterprise. So we've been pushing into that market for a while. But it was 2018, like a summer of 2018 digital twin studio was a company, all of our marketing was for arcades, all their marketing was for location based entertainment. They found us and they had built training content for a major oil and gas company that sold the content and they were deploying. And they realized, oh, no, we have the same exact problems that these arcades have, and there is not a solution. So for us, that was a definite kind of line in the sand. Okay, I think this is the first time that someone has sought us out. And instead of us trying to go make it happen. So we started looking a lot more seriously at the enterprise space, and going into 2020. So just ahead of the pandemic, we decided, we had a large hardware company approached us, this will be announced in a few months with a big opportunity that was an enterprise space. So going into 2020, we decided, You know what we need to focus back to the focus thing, this is a huge opportunity. The enterprise market is really, really heating up. That's more in alignment with what we feel like the vision is for the company. So let's let's just sell the entertainment division of the company and let's fully commit to enterprise. And so we we made that decision right before the pandemic hit, which then shut down all location based entertainment globally, which is a whole other story I'm going to but I'll just I'll pause there. That was kind of what led to it 2020, which is a crazy year getting that big hardware deal done. And then also selling off a location based entertainment division during a gold pandemic.

Did you complete that transaction before we realize what COVID was its impact or

No, no, no. We complete it. Yeah, it took it took almost the whole year. It COVID you know it, everything slowed. And ultimately, I think we look back. And I don't think I don't think any of us are just looking for a silver lining. But COVID has been so helpful for the acceleration of VR adoption and enterprise and education. I think we can kind of feel that is like companies who had been testing it. Were said okay, we let's adopt because they wouldn't remote. So ultimately, it was a great thing. But on the front end, it was just painful. Even the even the big hardware that we were working on there was enterprise focused, things slowed down. Everybody was reassessing. And 2020 was survival, survival, surviving, no revenue, surviving, trying to sell a business and position it that when when things come back, things will come back when they come back. This is valuable, and then trying to get that deal done. So it was a very, I thought I went into that year as a man. was a child that come out at least as a teenager. Yeah, it was it hardened us in a good way.

As it relates to the springboard experience, maybe prior to the the struggles of exiting and transitioning. What was one of kind of the key takeaways, a key learnings for you that you get to apply now to what you're doing at Arbor XR. Beyond kind of the specific, you know, technical details you learned about right, device management stuff.

One of the things that I was I preached to the team a lot. So we officially made the transition to arbour at the beginning of last year. And so during that transition, we were definitely doing some looking back. Okay, what has gotten us to this point, what has made us successful, and a ton of mistakes, ton of mistakes. A ton of things we tried that didn't work. And when you try things that don't work, that can be frustrating for the team, especially part of the team was how maybe you shouldn't try that to begin with. But what I kept preaching to the team was look the combination of all of that led us to be the market leader. And so as we mature as we take this next step, as we mature as we evolve, as we become more sophisticated going into enterprise, going into Series A, we do need to grow up. And we do need to become more sophisticated, but we can't lose what got us here. Because however you want to argue, however you want to, you know, assess the last three or four years, it led to global market leadership. And so I think that's something that even today, it's challenging, like, the more I don't even want to say the word success, because I think we're so far from success at this point. But the more growth you have, the more stability you get, the easier it is to slip into. Let's just not take the risk, let's not lose it. And I think that's something every day that we still think about is like, No, we have to keep that part of our DNA that led us to start an arcade, you know, a day after trying VR. And then a month later starting a software company and trying endless things all along the way, because that's what it took to find the things that worked. So I think being willing, again, just manage managing the tension of knowing the importance of focus. But understanding that you've got to try multiple things when you're in an emerging market with an undefined window of opportunity.

Experimentation is essential to growth. Yeah, you would notice you felt this opportunity was beyond LBE. Right, that LBE, maybe even ultimately, a short lived kind of period of time in which people are going to the arcades, to experience these VR devices. And, and you felt that there was an opportunity with an enterprise with initiation. And as you saw that you began that transition in 2020. What is it that you are doing differently at Arbor from a product perspective than what you were doing at Springboard? There? You were managing devices and content and users and at Arbor? How is that different?

Yeah, you know, it's very similar. In some ways, it feels like the LBE experience was a dress rehearsal for what we're doing now in enterprise. So we sold the whole our whole tech stack as part of that part of that exit. And we've rebuilt the new tech stack based on Android. So everything we did LBE was for tethered headsets. Now everything we do exclusively is for standalone Android based headsets. But it really comes down to the same core challenges, which at times is almost comical how similar it is. But it's it's at a greater scale, because you've got companies now, and I'll use axon is one of my favorite examples to use, and I can use it. So axon is doing a large deployment with HTC axon is a police training company, they invented the taser, back in the day, they rebranded as axon, they do body cams, and their mission is to make the bullet obsolete. So axon is rolling out police training across North America. So you've got axon, wanting to distribute 1000s of headsets across hundreds of police stations across North America. And you can imagine, Okay, step one is I have 1000 headsets was picker on number, I've got to get 1000 headsets set up. And then when I do that quickly, then I need to get them in the wild. And while they're in the wild, I need to manage them, I need to know where they are, I need to be able to push content to them and be able to manage the content that's on those devices, I need to be able to track what's happening on those devices. And I need to make sure because multiple users are using one device that it's secure that the right users and the right content. So it's, you know, the average size deployment, it'll be would be 10, or 12. Headsets, with some outliers. Right now, if we take out, I feel like it's a better assessment to take out all the all the all the really large deployments, we take all the really large deployments, the average is like 50. Our largest single deployment right now is five times what the total headset count, we were supporting NLB. Right. So it's just a whole new scale. But it's exactly exactly the same core problems, device management, content management and user management. And I'll say this, I think I think people intuitively understand the need to manage devices and users, I think both in LBE, and an enterprise. The content management piece is what gets overlooked. And it's kind of the hardest part in the VR space. So that's something that we we did that really well in LBE. We had a marketplace, we handle all the all the licensing, we help kind of set the price per unit of VR. And now that's another area where we're going pretty deep is on the content side.

I remember being at a similar point in the smartphone era smartfren Evolution revolution. And there was this poll from the enterprise to have the consumer grade iPhone device, all the CEOs wanted it. And the IT department said no, thank you. I understand Microsoft, we want Microsoft smart devices. And the CEO said no, no, make it work. And at that time, there grew up a number of companies that were really focused on mobile device management, like what does it mean now to have a bring your own device coming into the enterprise? How do we manage those devices? How do we make sure that they're secure, how to make sure they have access to the right set of apps in the right the right way? that whole industry grew up in. There are a number of major players. And it was very successful for a number of companies from a business opportunity. Why is not that group approaching this mobile device opportunity? You notice it's Android, its standalone devices. They look very similar from it from an outsider's perspective. Why do we not see the same mobile device management companies coming and taking this opportunity here as well? Yeah, that's

a great question. I think there's several reasons, I think the first is just the same reason you would give anytime an existing company is displaced in a new opportunity, because initially, it's not big enough for them to take care. And so their scale is so much different than ours, that we can be very happy in these early days with smaller scale, I think that's part of it. VMware did, at the end of last year announced a product that does support XR, it's not super robust. But they're the only one so far that has done that. And another challenge is that most of the MDM companies work with devices that run on Google managed services. And all of the all of the VR devices are non GMs devices. So that's one of the challenges is that these these legacy MDM companies that manage cell phones and tablets, the way they're set up is to support devices where they can plug into the low level API's that the Google managed services provides. So that's one of the challenges. And so there would be they would have to make a concerted effort to and commit to go support VR, or Android based devices, VR and VR, AR Android based devices, because the current offerings just don't work. And there's two, and this has been an evolution for us were early on, we thought we could coexist. And we thought, okay, well, we'll be we'll augment what these traditional companies are doing, they don't want to go really deep on the VR side of things, that's fine, we'll go deep will integrate with them, we can all live together happily, over several months of r&d, we just we've come to a really strong conclusion that that's absolutely not possible. And that the traditional legacy MDM offerings do not work. And the reason early on that we felt that one of the reasons that integration was possible, not only possible, but important is because a lot of the large companies we would talk to, would say they, they only don't want to use their existing software, or the it's got to integrate. But the more we got into it, any company that actually said that had not deployed anything with a legacy MDM, because it is it is nearly impossible to do well, everything from the initial provisioning, down to kind of the two big ones are content security. And you've got to be able to control the end headset experience in a pretty robust way to properly secure the headset and the traditional Indians just don't do that. And then on the content side, the size of files to begin with that they're used to distributing our you know, fraction of the size of the APKs of using VR. But then even beyond that, the ability to have have visibility on on the install into or onto the device without having put the headset on. So without getting into all the weeds, it started out even from my perspective of a lot of what we offer versus a traditional MDM are nice to haves. But it's really not it's it's it's multiple small pain points or friction points that are unavoidable. And they're totally overcome Abul if you're doing 10 headsets. But when you get into 50 100 1000, you're talking about hours and hours and hours of extra work and frustration. So we see an opportunity to take the experience we have how quickly we move and go as fast as we can take it as to get as many headsets as we can.

You've noted that COVID was an accelerant for companies to move beyond maybe some basic experimentation to wider scale adoption of these sorts of technologies. As you've gotten our works, are you taking those lessons from springboard and you rebuilt the platform focused on the standalone headsets? What has been the response from your customers? How have they reacted to the set of problems you're trying to solve for them?

You know, it's been, it's been really, really rewarding. Because maybe unfortunately, there was a lot of on the job learning for us with springboard. And we're able to take all of that experience and all those mistakes and come in with a really polished product right out the gate. And so again, and again, that this is what happens with company. This is my perspective on what happens with enterprises or education institutions who are adopting XR. It starts with somebody who's excited about new technology, and they're kind of the forerunner and they could get things going. But the part that we the role that we play is so non sexy and so in the weeds that most of the time, whether it's a hardware company, the company creating content or even the VR champion at the institution, they don't think about the pain points of scale until they're at that point. So it's rewarding because people come to us, when they've already jumped through all these hoops. I've gotten leadership sign off on XR, they've run a small pilot, they proven that it works. And now they're going to go from 10 headsets to whatever. And it's like, oh, no, we didn't think about how we're going to do this. So then when we can bring in the solution, although arbour is technically a year old, we've been building this type of solution for over five years. So we're bringing in a solution that has been in the works a long time, it's very polished. It's great, because I think one of our perspectives and not that this is a unique perspective. But VR, AR XR are so powerful. And what's exciting is that the hardware has gotten good enough and cheap enough and accessible enough and the content and it has gotten good enough. And there's enough data around the efficacy of training and VR, like, all these things are lining up. But what's holding it back, one of the big things going back, it's still these minor friction points. And so for us to come in and say, Okay, we're going to do everything we can to remove that last bit of friction. So that it's it's easy to go from this, wouldn't it be great to deploy VR training to actually doing it? It's been, it's

been great. How does the business model work? firebreaks are what are your customers paying for specifically?

So they pay a per headset license? Generally, that's annually, there's there's discounts for volume, and then for free to you and nonprofit. So it's $84 annually per device for the basic.

And you'd mentioned that if you take out the big deployments, the average was around 50 devices per customer, roughly. What is the scale roughly the scale of those larger deployments, hundreds 1000s 1000s.

And what's interesting, exciting and scary all at once. Is that the why with reference, one of our larger one of our largest deployments is like 15 16,000 headsets, there's some some there's multiple, you know, in the 10 1000s, and then there's several in the 1000s. But all of those are still in the process of scale. Which is really exciting. Because even these, the the largest deployment, we have started out at 10 or 1510. Ad Sets then went to 50 headsets, because every one of these companies is at a different part in the process of of piloting and scaling. So it's fun. It's it makes it makes it difficult forecasting sometimes, because it's hard to know which 50 headsets going to be the next 10,000 headset deployment. But there's definitely an upward trend across the board. And it just feels like a matter of time.

And the use case is exclusively primarily training.

Yeah, and I mean, the training, and there are medical applications, and one of my co founders, who is kind of on the front edge of our business bizdev and sales, he would say that he feels like there's, there's he everywhere. But there's maybe the most unique heat on healthcare right now. So there are a lot of medical applications. But I think just generally training is kind of where I see I kind of argue with him. It's not I think it's more training. You know, even in education, I use that loosely even education, we work with a company called prisms, I think, you know, prisms, and they're doing to me one of the coolest things right now in VR in education. And they, a lot of companies over the last decade or two have tried to, quote unquote, digitize education. And everyone's failed, in my opinion. But they've been able to take algebra and visualize it in a way that students are actually learning quicker and actually learning not just memorizing. So there's applications like that, that if I was still kind of grouped into the training bucket, you know, something you could put on a headset, and it's either difficult, expensive or dangerous to reproduce in the real world. But you can get getting a headset, and you can do it over and over again.

Yeah, prisons is awesome. I got to play with an alpha version, when they done their first bit of content around teaching exponential functions. Beginning to visualize that for us as humans, we are very linear thinkers. And so it was a really nice module, and I love where they're going specifically. But this this notion that training as a bucket for enterprise for education, is a key area medical is a key area. Where does where does it yet AR fit into the mix, or is it still all VR?

So for us, we're almost exclusively although we fully support AR almost exclusively our customers are in VR right now. And I think, for us specifically, we have two big deals in the works, one that we just signed that will be announced soon that are AR related. So we're very excited about about AR, but it does just seem that it's a little bit slower. I think most people would say ultimately AR gets bigger and enterprise, but it feels like it's just a slower, slower to launch. I mean even even you know some of the numbers if you look at musics 10,000 headsets, we have one, we have one br deployment, multiple single deployments, it's larger than we have one deployment larger than an annual sales of the whole AR company. Right. So we can't live off of 10,000 headsets a year. So I think I think it plays an important role. It just it's, it seems to be growing at a much slower pace. Yeah. So easy just to put somebody into a module that they can go through 100 times and learn a basic task. I mean, that's very intuitive and easy. And there's that instant impact the bottom line?

Yeah. As you kind of put together, right, you have this current focus on VR, because that's what the market is. That's what the devices are. That's where the enthusiasm the adoption is from your customers, you have this nascent opportunity around AR devices as well, and certainly no restriction to that. And we'll embrace it as it comes. How do you kind of pull all of what you've done together and describe the vision you have for the company going forward?

For us. And again, me not being tech. I'm not a VR enthusiast. I'm not a technology enthusiast. I'm an impact enthusiast. And so from the very beginning, this deep, why that we want to help shape this massive new technology for good. And I know, you sound good, he's had to find good, but at high level, you know, so that's driven everything for five years. And so I'm going to answer your question in two ways. We saw that play out several different ways in location based entertainment, where we are today is that we have a very strong position that XR, whether it's AR VR, is a tool. And it's a tool that should improve our quality of life, it should not be a place where we escape, it should make our work or travel, or learning our training more efficient, so that we actually have more time in the real world for meaningful connection versus escaping. So that's one big part of the vision we have for a company and something we want to really stand for we do stand for going to push back this escapism this distraction economy, which is I don't think good for any of us. I think it's bad for humankind, more practically how it plays out for us right now is how can we in the enterprise space where all the applications are very much let's use XR as a tool? How do we remove as much friction as possible to help XR scale as fast as possible. And ultimately, we want to be the VI management platform for XR enterprise.

Amazing, I resonate your vision around AR VR for good for enhancing the human experience with our real world and with our other real humans. And not escapism certainly resonates with me personally as well. That's great. As you look out over the next 1218 months or so, what do you see as some of the biggest hurdles or pain points to your growth,

we're seeing in the last six months in particular, it feels like we've like hit the like we're in the growth curve. Maybe we're not up the growth curve, but it started and we're seeing just massive growth every month. And in the springboard days, a couple different times. We thought that moment was coming and we scale too quickly. And so great learning experiences having to do layoffs, worst thing ever, most painful thing. But it's made us very hesitant to get hyped. Like we don't say scale, like we say with growth. Like we're not gonna scale we're gonna grow. But it really does feel like every every indicator I'm seeing and I'll go back to prisms and say to me, prisms, it's such a great indicator because prisms is algebra. Okay, it's not oil and gas. It's not NASA, it is algebra. And you've got public school districts across the country in small town America signing up as fast as I can. So every indicator I see. And then at the other end spectrum, everyday you see you see another fortune 500 company deploying VR is that it's going. So for us the challenge is managing pace, which I always you know, if I write down as CEO, what are my two or three main jobs, what's always on that list is pace. And so making sure that we grow fast enough to capitalize on the opportunities and that we're ready. And we're not always behind the eight ball, but that we don't grow so fast that we're underwater, like has happened in the past. So I I'm just so excited. I mean, I think everybody who has been weathering and waiting and hoping for VR to go, my strong opinion is that it's going at least in this space that I live in enterprise. And it feels like this payoff, not financially even but just all the work and all the hoping and all the pain we've all gone through for so long. We're going to start to really realize that vision.

It's happening to me after all these years, that vision you the excitement you felt in 2016 is now happening here and 2022 Right. Do you have any concerns about the market more broadly, kind of given this arbor exaro but also the broader VR ecosystem is kind of on this uptick on the growth curve. Are there any big concerns you have that might suppress or dampen that, that growth?

My concern, wouldn't dampen growth. And I think what, whatever meta decides to do, is just really, really important. Because Facebook, Oculus met or whatever, they showed the world what was possible, or what is possible with the quest to they went everybody's appetite, okay, it's affordable. It works. It just works. And it works, it works well. And so you know, you've got a lot of companies, big and small, that are just salivating at the potential for how VR can change how they work, how they train, whatever. But money is, is important. And there aren't a lot of great alternatives. Right now, for cheap, high quality headsets, there's a few, but they're a little more expensive. And so we really need either Facebook to become more ethical. Or we need other hardware companies to stand up. Because I think the world that I don't think any of us want to live in other than Zuckerberg is five or 10 years from now 80% 90% of headsets in the consumer space may be okay, you know, that's a consumer making a decision to give up, we've kind of already given up our privacy anyway. But an enterprise and you think about training and the sensitivity of that, and I just don't want to see the world, the enterprise world be owned by meta, because I just don't think that's a good outcome for anyone.

Yeah, the motivations there are in conflict with a lot of users in best interest. Exactly. Today to come back to some of the challenges that that you faced as a founder, some unique circumstances, you know, that you put yourself in, you'd notice that you'd started in there's, you know, you are knowledgeable. We've kind of already talked a bit about your non tech founder from Oklahoma. You started in Oklahoma and started started upward VR when you're still there in Oklahoma doing the first arcade but your wife pulled you in the family to California for a while. How did you end up now back in Oklahoma after all these years?

Yeah, man I, early on, we don't we didn't advertise the Oklahoma thing. I think sometimes there's a negative connotation whether there should or shouldn't be, but we love California, we have a lot of great friends are and we actually are there often, but we really family is what brought us back, we have four kids, now we have another one coming grandparents are here. And so for this season of our life with little kids being close to family, just kind of trumped the fun of, of SoCal. And the reality is, you know, working remote, I mean, we closed our entire series A, and I don't know if we had one in person meeting. So almost to my detriment I'd become so I don't want to leave zoom. As much as I know the value and importance of real world interaction that it just feels at times, like you really can be anywhere. And we have enough of enough of a foundation now and SoCal that the relationships are there. And so for the foreseeable future, I'm back in Oklahoma, but we've got almost 30 people in the team now and they're all over the world. So we've got a group in Canada, you got it, you know, several spread across Europe, folks spread across the US. So we're very much international team.

What are the techniques that you use to build that strong sense of team and culture with such a disparate team?

You know, I think it sounds simple, but one is just having a really strong clear vision and why that's the glue that you can't buy. And then I think number two, you've got to hire good people. Like if you hire people that are in alignment with your culture, then you don't have to enforce culture. Because culture is really what is just the outpouring of the outgrowth of the sum of everybody's personalities, unless you're very rigid with it, and you can't be rigid with it in a remote team. And I'll say, going back to the luck thing. Matthew Hall, our CTO is just incredible. He has had an incredible ability to hire really, really well. And he does a great job of it, but it's his personality. It's we hired out of luck, a good person that was such a good culture fit that just oozes culture. And now he hires people, you know, they're in the same vein, but the engineering team just has such a great disconnection. And I'll say this, we went through, I think we've had, but we went through a round of layoffs. And it was painful. It was unexpected. It was horrible. It was my fault. 10 months later, we were in a better spot. We went back to several of those people and wasn't really laid off is more like you're just there. This isn't like temporary, you're fired, kind of. No. And it's because we don't have money. We went back to a handful those people a year later, every single one of them came back. And to me like that's just it's I still can't believe it, but they came back because they believe in the vision. And because they, they believed in the team that they were working on. And most of those were engineers, so I can't even take they're not working closely with me. So I think it's just so important that you hire well. And then you know, we mean, we just simple things like no matter what, we have an all team every week, so that everyone feels connected. But I don't think you can attribute strong culture for remote team for an hour, one hour of call every week, it's got to be deeper than that. So that is a concern, honestly, back to your question of like, over the next 1218 months for us, as we, as we grow, we have to make we have to really discipline ourselves to not hire too quickly. Because we feel the crunch and make sure we're still hiring the right people. Because without a doubt, we're here because of the people, not 90%. I mean, 110%

has the this hire of a CTO, Ben, the key to you as a non tech founder, finding success, kind of a cutting edge technology area? Or is there more to it? Like how do you mitigate the risks of being in a high tech company as a as a non tech founder?

Yeah, I think my personality is very much anti micromanage. So it kind of just worked from the beginning that my expectation was never to hire the expert, let the expert do what the expert does. We've definitely had to work at building trust and relationship over the years. And because of, you know, the co founders, one was a friend. And then the third was a friend's friend, right? So you have this relational history there that this trust just comes? Well, Matt, we heard out of Canada, I had no background with Matt. And so it's honestly been going through multiple fires together and building this mutual trust. Because I am very much in a lot of ways at his mercy. I mean, a lot of what he does is a blackbox, to me that I have to just trust what he's saying. So you've got to build trust, but but really, the whole idea of letting people not micromanaging is built on trust. So you got to have trust. But I think also for us, we try to really lead with transparency, like we understand, for me to trust them, they have to first trust me. And, and that's been painful, like, it's easy to be transparent. When everything goes well. And we have not always done it well. And we've had to come back and say, you know, we shielded you as a team from some, some challenges. And we probably shouldn't have, we should have been more transparent. And I think going through all that together builds trust, I will say, I think about this fairly often the strengths and weaknesses of being a non tech founder. And really all three of us being non tech founders. One of the core values, we really, it's like a true core value for us as the work life balance. And it may be because all three founders have kids and families. And so we're kind of forced into that. But I think, you know, if you if you ask the team off record anonymously, they would all say like, yeah, absolutely, like this company, is has got a really healthy work life balance. And sometimes I think if one of the three founders was technical, I think we would be working twice as much because we could. So it's kind of this nice built in buffer that keeps us from working overtime too much. But even if I look back at at springboard into success, and I think even the success we're having now, yes, we had an incredible product that Matt, engineering led Absolutely. But because I wasn't the three, the other, the other three of us weren't technical founders, you've got three more full time bodies, doing sales, marketing, and deal making and fundraising. So I think that's one of the big benefits. You know, I've got friends who are our tech founders, and they're raising their Series A, and they're the CTO, and they're the CEO. And that mean, I don't know how you do that. Like that. I think sometimes we feel like we're about to pass out. And we have a pretty good division of responsibilities. So I do think that for us even is an advantage over some of over the years to smaller competition is that it's hard to match a team, you've got one founder who is full time sales, one is full time deal making and fundraising and one is full time marketing. Oh, and then you've got a you know, a legit CTO. So I think it's helped. I think it helps to think I'm thinking with the positive sides. There's something healthy about being at arm's length from anything, you don't get as emotionally tied to it. So I think I, because I'm not passionate about code. I'm not passionate about the technology per se. I think sometimes I probably have a more sober perspective and can make harder decisions easier than if it was my baby. I mean, we've had to make decisions many times where it's like, just cut it move to this cut it move to make them quickly, and we've been able to do that. It's private easier since it wasn't my baby.

This dispassionate connection to what has been done, I'm sure enables better decision making without a doubt and the connection that you have to solving the problem right to really being committed to the customers pain, the customers problem and buffer against, I guess the realities of what's happening in the market. Right. And you had mentioned that 2020 was a was a challenging year, it reminds me I was reading loon shots and loon shots kind of talks about some of these truly breakthrough technologies and companies over the last many decades and some of the commonalities between them and and he talked a bit about this, this creative tension between focus versus experimentation. In in that that particular book, he talked about the the creative tension between the groups of people who are focused on the experimentation, and the groups of people who are really focused on excellence and just doing something really well, right. And sometimes those things are in high conflict. And anyway, but one of the things that he had mentioned, this particular book, the author was this, the common experience that so many disease highly successful products companies go through, which is near death, they come so close to death multiple times, before they finally see the promised land and have the sort of growth and success that they've anticipated from the outset. And so you kind of hinted that 2020 had some of that, but you talk a bit more about some of those near death experiences, and, and how you manage that process, how you managed to survive as a team?

Yeah. You know, man, the the near death thing, looking back, because we're more stable than we've ever been. There's a book by Malcolm Gladwell called David versus Goliath, and, you know, the premises, how does the underdog win. And he looks at all these different case studies. And one of the case studies was, I think, during World War Two, Germany had this idea of, we're just going to, we're going to bomb the heck out of some part of England, and we're just going to basically destroy their will. And the exact opposite happened, because the bombs would kill a few people, which isn't good. But instead of crushing the will, of the remaining people, there, many people felt like, oh, I survived a near death experience. And so this almost like subconscious sense of purpose began to rise up and everyone. At the same time, the fear of death, or the fear of being bombed, was diminished. And it's kind of interesting. And I think looking back for us, that's so true. I don't know how you have success without having some near death experiences, and not that you should go looking for them. But for us, imagine, we were raising money and surviving with a location based entertainment software company. I mean, for us, I mean, month to month, survival, four years, of me raising money on the side, but in all forms, equity, debt, whatever, whatever to survive, just the vision and dream being if we can keep getting enough success, we're going to parlay this into a bigger opportunity. And after a certain point, like it just builds up to strengthen you. So that was challenging, but then multiple times along the way. When you live that way, you're setting yourself up for other challenges. You know, one time we had a big commitment just fall out at the last minute, and we had to do round of layoffs. And that matures you in ways that a few things. Do you know when you have to look your friend in the eye and say, hey, it's my fault. But we have to let you go. So it strengthens you and matures you. I think one of the biggest near death experiment experiences we had was in 2020. So we had this plan of selling location based entertainment, the location based entertainment division before COVID, we had a buyer all lined up, everything was good, COVID hits, everything gets thrown out, revenue goes to zero. And so we had we had enough cash to last for a while. And we were in the middle of what's pivot into enterprise. Let's get this big other hardware deal done. And then we'll raise our series. Well, everything drugged. So like we, you know, at the beginning here, it's like, well, as long as we get this stuff done by like, July, August will be fine. If it goes past that it's gonna be tough. Well, we get to Thanksgiving. And I mean, we're like drowning right now. And we hadn't sold the division of the company. We have no revenue, and we have not signed the big deal. So even for years, I could always just go find money somehow. But now I've got nothing. What am I raising money for? Location Based Entertainment has no revenue, and I'm selling it. And okay, give us money. Because you think we can go to something enterprise, we have no customers, we have no deals signed. I mean, it was just like, it was and we got to, so we're like two or three months past when we should have died. We get to Thanksgiving. And the company that we were going to sell to which we ultimately did sell to said no, we're not going to buy it. And it was one of the darkest moments of my life because it was like I risked everything and everything. And I don't know what we're gonna do. And so I really talked about near death. I feel like I died and came back to life. But a few days later, they changed their mind. We completed the deal. We got the heart We're deal signed a few weeks later. And then we came in to last year in a really strong position to raise our Series A. But yeah, when you here's the thing, when you go through, maybe it's similar to the people in World War Two, I heard a no on selling this division of my company with everything on the line, everything on the line for me personally, for everyone on my team, every one of my investors, it was all going to be gone. And I heard a note. And it was in three days later than no became a yes. So it just changes your perspective even on hearing no, the power. No loses a lot of power. When it felt like for me then, you know, the the worst possible everything on the line situation. A no became a yes. So yeah, it's got to be part of you just you don't as rattled, right? Like, it's a lot harder to rattle you when you survived a lot of really hard things.

So even the most painful knows, could still be a yes. Yeah, there's still hope.

Yes, I've had them. I mean, I had the most painful now possible. So

your three days of having died, and then were resurrected. So here three days? What? What did you do in those three days?

Well, I got the news. I mean, I remember very clearly when I got the news. I mean, it's Thanksgiving, so a good time. And it was COVID. So no family, we were in California, no family was coming out. As my wife and our three kids. And I think the kid there was the evening and I was telling my wife, and it was just like a dark few hours, like, what are we going to do? And I finally did, okay, like, I just got to, like, let it go put out in my mind. And, you know, focus on the fact like this is I was beyond exhausted. My wife was actually fully pregnant at the time. It was it was really we were both just beyond exhausted. She's a psychiatrist, and she had been working three or four hours more a day because of COVID. Because all the patients need more help. So we were just as a family unit at like, beyond depletion levels. And so we just see what we got to focus on what's most important. Let's just forget all this for a few days, and figure it out when we come back to work on Monday. And I don't know, I think sometimes it's helpful to just like, let something go. And and then Yeah, So

was there any additional input from you? They turn that no into a yes.

Yeah, I got some vision on kind of a one last it all, here's it, here's a piece of learning and the whole process, and you do something sometimes you know, stuff. And then you make this mistake, and you look back and you think how was I so stupid? The person that we were talking to, to do the deal that had been giving us yes, all along, was not the main decision maker. And I know you won't, you probably want to want to slap me like Brad, come on. How do you not know that? But I don't know how I didn't know that I'd known this guy for a long time, I got a great relationship with this guy. And I thought he had more power than he did. And so I didn't get to the ultimate decision maker till way too far in the process. So I will just encourage anybody if you're doing an important deal, and you aren't the decision maker, get to them ASAP. It's better, it would have been so much better if it was ultimately a no for me to hear that No, three months before, then when I did hear, because I've lost three months. And so I had just finally connected with the main guy a few times. And I was able to overcome. Honestly one of his biggest one of the biggest objections was because pre COVID, we had had our best month ever everything was like this, like, so like January or February whenever COVID Hit best month ever. And so when it finally got to him, he had two things that he said, he said, I've got so much stuff going on. Like this just feels like it could be a distraction in my whole. And then his second thing was like, why are you selling this? Like, it's so good? Why are you selling it? And I had not answered those two questions. Well, because part of the reason I said why I was selling it, which was true was for focus, because we had this new big opportunity. But I had not given enough details on the new opportunity, I think for him to fully believe that was why. And also me saying oh, I'm selling this for focus, just fed into his his own issue of I don't want to take on. So I had to go back and really communicate how that deal would actually give him focus by taking the team that he was getting with takes more off his plate. And then we just had to get more transparent on we're selling this for focus for this opportunity. This is the new opportunity. He understand more how big you know how big was, but also at that point, too. We were selling it because we needed money. You know, like the beginning of the year, it was like, let's be great. At that point. We were near death and needed money. So I think going that's another huge lesson of 2020 for us, is being transparent, and it's hard and it's scary. And there are times maybe when you I don't wanna say you shouldn't be transparent. I don't know that you should always say, you know, here's everything right, but there were three or four different times that year where we came up to a really hard decision or issue and my reluctance to be transparent and not because I was high Eating something because I thought it was just the right way to do it. It didn't work. And when I just took the risk and was transparent and said, Okay, part of the reason we're selling this because we need money because I'm about to die, I'm dying right now. It's like then he then he believed everything else I was saying was all true, right? So yeah, there was it was like step away from it for three days. And I've kind of got this like burst of inspiration of how to go back and overcome his final objections.

Amazing. So here, the right decision was to be transparent with the other side of the bargaining table.

Yes, every step of the way of that deal when I would resist transparency, because I thought I could figure it out or fix it. It didn't work. And every time I took the risk to be transparent, it moved in the right direction.

Amazing. Transparency is scary. It is scary. It is scary. Let's wrap up with a few lightning round questions here. What commonly held belief about XR VR? AR? Do you disagree with?

Well, what I touched on earlier is just that the future is in the metaverse, and I just don't think it is I don't think I think people value real connection too much. Now, I just don't I don't think that's the future. Maybe it's part of the future. But it's not

the future. Escapism cannot be 100% of our experience, now or humanity's over. What book have you read recently that you found to be deeply insightful or profound?

Well, I have a lot of kids, and I realized, hey, you should probably read some books on parenting. And you know, you read all their stuff. So a book that was recommended to me recently, I have three daughters and one on the way, I have one son called strong father's strong daughters. And it is, man, it'll hit you because it just shows how powerful it just, I mean, this whole book is the father daughter relationship. But how powerful just time with your daughter is and how impactful it is. And I'll give you one stat lots of stats in the book too, which is great. It's not just concepts. They said that one of the number one solutions to girls suffering from bulimia or anorexia is to spend more time with their fathers. That's actually what psychologist and psychiatrist recommend, and spending more time with the fathers. Because of whatever it does to build up the daughter self esteem is one of the best ways to solve that problem, which is just, to me, it's mind blowing. Amazing. If you have a daughter, you will cry reading the book many times I was just like, I was listening to you on a plane. I'm like covering up I'm sobbing like,

I just need to talk to my daughter. How old are your kids? What's the age range?

eight to one. And then another one coming in a few months?

Eight? One. I have two daughters who are now nine and 11. And somebody else recently recommended the same exact book. Okay. And so I think maybe it's time. That's the clue I should go.

Going after you read it. Let's uh, I'd love to have a quick chat and get your thoughts.

Yeah, sounds good. You can sit down and have coffee with your 25 year old self. What advice would you share with 25 year old Brad?

I'm gonna answer with cliched terms here, maybe. But there's a deeper meaning just hold on and trust the process. I think when you're 25, you think you're old. And you think you have some experience, but you just don't. And as much talent and vision and drive, as you may have. It's got to be coupled with experience and the the battle hardening that explained the wisdom that come from experience and just just hold on, just walk out the process. The hard stuff is actually what makes you you going through the hard stuff is what's going to make you successful ultimately. Yeah, so hold on,

hold on. Would you advise that you should seek out and embrace those those hard moments? to actively look for them? No, just No,

no. I think what's important, I think so many people of all ages struggle with committing to something. So I think it's less about seeking out challenges and more about not shying away from them and just come especially at 25. If you totally fail, who cares? Like fully commit to something and fully see it through to success or failure. Instead of changing your mind every three to six months and jump into one from one thing to the next. If I would never hire that person, I would hire the person that committed and failed miserably 10 times before I would hire the person that just bounced around.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Any closing thoughts you'd like to share?

I I'll say I said earlier, what I've been doing in my talks one, I've always kind of paused in the middle and just encourage everybody. We have a unique perspective. In some ways, we're more frontlines than others. And I just really, really, really feel like now is the time for XR and enterprise. It's the fortune 500 adoption, public school adoption, where hardwares at all the data coming out out around the efficacy of training. And so maybe the same thing I would say, you know, hold on, like, Hold on just a little bit longer and be encouraged that we've made it to at least I believe one checkpoint on this journey of VR and I think I think this year is going to be really not so think we're gonna look back at this year and see the The biggest growth in viewer adoption by far in the 12 month period and we've seen to date

Yeah, we've we've hit that inflection point in the S curve here for VR. Yeah. Where can people go to learn more about you and your work there and Arbor XR,

we've got a great website. We have a co founder who works on marketing. So you got a great website at Arbor X ROI calm, and then I can be reached by email Brad at Arbor X article. Awesome, Brad, thanks

so much for the conversation.

It's been great Jason. Appreciate it.

Before we go, I'm going to tell you about the next episode. In it I speak with David Bonelli. David is the founder and CEO of Pulsar, a company of mechanical and optical experts dedicated to solving the hard problems of AR hardware. He spent several years at the ones venerable ODG and since he's worked with companies such as Rokid, Red six, Qwake and Microsoft, and he's been involved with projects for everything from fighter pilots, to firefighters to space explorers. In this conversation, we chat about those projects, the current state of AR hardware and his opinions about which technologies have the best chance of winning over the long term. They can really enjoy the conversation. Please follow or subscribe to the podcast you don't miss this or other great episodes. Until next time