Evan Sitler-Bates is the co-founder and CEO of XpertVR, an Ontario company that builds virtual reality training simulations for firefighters and other first responders. He co-founded it in 2017 with Drew MacNeil while both were students at Brock University's Goodman School of Business, spent the early years on 360 video and academic research studies, and pivoted in 2020 when COVID left pre-service fire and police foundations students with no way to get hands-on training. XpertVR now works with multiple Ontario colleges and with the Office of the Fire Marshal of Ontario, and runs in California, Colorado, parts of South America and into Europe.In this conversation with Caleb Pedosiuk, Evan explains what a fire simulation is actually for: not the physical work, but the strategy, the communication and the resource management that a classroom cannot rehearse. He describes the shift from characters you drag out of a building to characters you can question about their injuries and who else is in the house, the Gaussian splatting pipeline that will let a department train in the buildings it actually covers, and why the heat, smell and haptic hardware he has built with before stays out of the kit on purpose. He makes the case that mixed reality, not pure VR, is the two-year horizon, and that the useful version of Ready Player One is the one that gets people looking at the world instead of down at their laps. Asked what he needs most to grow, he says new markets, bought the way Ontario bought it, at the provincial and state level rather than department by department.Evan is exactly the kind of founder, innovator, and problem solver this series exists to put a light on. He has spent years convincing a profession that trains for the worst day of someone's life that a simulation is worth its time, and he can show what changed when a province bought it at once. Authority is earned by building things worth talking about, and an honest account of that work is what makes a brand understood, trusted, and findable by the systems people now ask for answers.Learn more about XpertVR: https://xpertvr.comEvan Sitler-Bates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evansitlerbates/What We Need to Grow is Caleb Pedosiuk's founder conversation series from 79 Development, on growth, judgment, and the thinking behind building great companies. It exists to shine a light on the founders, innovators, problem solvers, and pioneers building things that matter.Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5O6IiwVl4tHyhegQafVZLaPodcast sponsored by 79 Development Inc | 79dev.com#vrtraining #firefighters #firstresponders #simulationtraining #mixedreality #immersivelearning #founders #podcast