Building with Purpose: Brad Scoggin and the Story Behind ArborXR
It doesn’t take long to notice Brad Scoggin’s presence. As CEO and Co-founder of ArborXR, he exudes a grounded, relatable leadership that stands out in an industry often defined by hype and hardware specs. Brad and his team bring a rare mix of humility, grit, and purpose that corporate partners and peers notice right away.
For Brad, that purpose has always been the compass guiding his entrepreneurial journey — one that began far from the world of XR and enterprise technology.
A Purpose Beyond Profit
Brad grew up in a small town in Oklahoma where values like hard work and integrity ran deep. But his early success in academics didn’t shield him from feeling lost. He describes his younger years as marked by ambition without direction, until a pivotal experience in his early twenties shifted his entire outlook on life. That realization gave him clarity about what truly mattered and shaped a worldview centered on purpose over prestige.
That sense of purpose took root during his years working for a nonprofit in Latin America. Immersed in communities striving for systemic change, Brad saw both the beauty and difficulty of transforming entrenched systems. “It showed me how hard it is to shift systems,” he recalls. The experience left him with a conviction that doing good for the world and building profitable, scalable businesses shouldn’t be at odds. They should coexist.
The experience convinced him that the best time to shape systems is at the beginning and that businesses built on the right foundation can do good, be profitable, and scale. That conviction became Brad’s north star.
From VR Arcades to Enterprise Solutions
Brad’s first ventures were far from Silicon Valley boardrooms. Together with co-founders Will Stackable and Jordan Williams, they started small in Oklahoma City, experimenting with early consumer VR arcades to understand how emerging technology could actually reach everyday people.
After raising capital and opening a local VR arcade with just 10 headsets, Brad and his co-founders quickly ran into a problem: there was no good way to manage devices or license VR content at scale. So they built their own platform. The team then started manually mapping out hundreds of arcades in spreadsheets and cold-emailing owners around the world. What began as a scrappy internal tool for their single arcade grew within 18 months into the leading commercial VR content and device management platform, used in more than 40 countries.
Their pragmatic, relationship-first approach and rapid traction caught the attention of major tech players such as Sony, Intel, Qualcomm and Microsoft, even while much of the world was still skeptical about the future of consumer VR and led to enterprise relationships that would soon pay dividends.
Eventually, their entertainment assets were acquired by a public company. At that point, the team refocused on building something more enduring — an enterprise-grade platform to help organizations securely manage and scale XR deployments. That pivot became ArborXR.
A Pivotal Moment
2019 marked a turning point. One of the biggest IT companies in the world approached Brad’s team with an offer to white-label their software for a new standalone VR headset. A massive vote of confidence and a grueling test of execution.
The project demanded intense precision and speed, pushing the small team to operate like a much larger enterprise. Then, as Covid-19 swept across the globe, everything came to a standstill. Deals were paused, revenue froze, and by August 2020, ArborXR was weeks away from running out of capital.
“Those were the hardest months,” Brad recalls. But through that pressure came transformation. The experience forced the company to mature — refining their processes, shortening release cycles, and deepening customer empathy. While that partnership later fell through, the credibility and discipline they had built through that process helped unlock new enterprise relationships with Walmart, Axon, and others.
Powering the Next Era of Training
ArborXR took another leap forward when they acquired InformXR, an immersive data company.
That acquisition became the foundation for ArborXR Insights and marked a shift from simply managing devices to helping companies stitch immersive training into their existing systems and measure what matters.
With Insights, organizations can streamline the learner experience, track performance, and view results through reporting that flows into their LMS and BI tools.
The data that Insights captures is now laying the groundwork for advanced analytics and AI that help customers cut training costs, improve safety, and make workers more effective, turning immersive technology from scattered pilots into a core, measurable part of how the business operates.
Evolving with Insight and Integrity
ArborXR’s latest evolution was catalyzed through the Engage program, which helped affirm an adjustment in their enterprise strategy. Early on, ArborXR played a more passive role in the success of corporate pilot programs. But conversations with corporates revealed an opportunity for ArborXR to lean on their industry expertise and take a more active role in helping companies shorten the time to XR value and ultimately go to scale.
That insight fueled this shift. ArborXR has begun taking a more consultative role, guiding enterprises from “pilot” to “platform” and helping them design, deploy, and scale immersive programs across business units. Pilots with corporate partners are now validating this model, positioning ArborXR as both a software provider and a strategic partner in helping organizations realize XR’s full potential.
Leadership, Timing, and Trust
Brad often describes the company’s journey as one shaped by perseverance, collaboration, and careful judgment. He’s the first to admit that success has never been linear. “There were moments when walking away would’ve been the easy option,” he says, “but you can’t fake belief in what you’re building.”
He credits his co-founders, and the broader community that’s grown around ArborXR, for the resilience that’s carried them forward. His leadership style is grounded in transparency and empathy: stay close to the customer, be honest about what’s working and what’s not, and build trust through consistency.
That philosophy has guided ArborXR’s evolution from a niche startup to a trusted enterprise partner, with two-week release cycles and deep integration into customer ecosystems — proof that purpose and performance can scale together.
Brad’s Founder Equation
Today, ArborXR stands at the intersection of technology and transformation, helping organizations deploy immersive learning, training, and collaboration tools securely and at scale.
Brad sees the journey as just beginning. “I want to keep building companies that create real value and impact,” he says. “If we can help others grow, learn, and operate better — that’s success.”
In an industry defined by innovation, Brad reminds us that what truly matters isn’t just what we build, but why we build it. And as he puts it, his personal equation for success is: “Grit + Community + Timing.”
Recent Comments