The Missing Pieces

After Savvis and Intira, I kept returning to the same underlying problem from different directions.

How do you distribute a complicated digital experience without forcing the customer to understand the infrastructure beneath it?

The product changed.

The infrastructure problem remained.

Broadband Investment Group

Broadband Investment Group was an attempt to create a shared operating and investment structure around multiple communications and technology companies.

The vision was not simply to invest money.

It was to give portfolio companies shared infrastructure, leadership, talent, facilities and strategic support.

Founder Recollection

My manuscript describes an approximately $18 million investment involving prominent families, rapid growth to more than 200 employees and a portfolio model inspired by the large Internet holding companies of the era. Those figures remain founder-supplied until original financing and corporate records are added to the archive.

BIG in the Press1 photograph · click to open

⤢St. Louis Post-Dispatch — “Purchase will allow BIG.” WorldCom took an equity stake in Broadband Investment Group as part of a $35 million deal in which BIG bought the WorldCom building on Highway 40 (Interstate 64) for $37.35 million. “We pulled it off,” said Broadband chairman and chief visionary officer Tim Roberts. “It’s a big deal.” The purchase opened the way for BIG—then 125 employees—to hire 400 more over the following 90 days.

Broadband Investment Group — The Founder Archive2 photographs · click to open

⤢BIG Network Operations Center (later Savvis acquired building)⤢Savvis World Headquarters — front and rear views of the former Brooks Fiber building in St. Louis. Tim Roberts, on behalf of BIG (Broadband Investment Group), secured the building on a 99-year lease with a $1 buyout option before WorldCom and later Savvis held the asset.

BIG taught me:

• Shared services can accelerate many companies.
• Centralized capability can create efficiency.
• A holding company can become fragile when every portfolio business depends on the same capital environment.
• Rapid growth magnifies both strengths and weaknesses.

Peter Roberts, Wanforce and Phoenix Networks

Peter’s story did not end with Whackoland.

He built his own technical career and contributed to communications and network businesses including Wanforce and Phoenix Networks.

Our lives moved together, apart and together again.

We were twins. Competitors. Collaborators.

Two people shaped by the same early modem world but not destined to follow identical paths forever.

Family Record

Peter’s death at a young age gave the larger story a permanent sense of unfinished conversation. My working manuscripts describe his life and death as a central emotional part of the broader W(hack)o Cracko story.

Infinium Labs and Phantom

Phantom explored the delivery of digital games into the living room.

The concept combined:

• Consumer hardware.
• Software.
• Digital game delivery.
• Subscriptions.
• Entertainment interfaces.
• Publisher relationships.
• Online distribution.

The company recruited experienced industry figures, including Kevin Bachus from the original Microsoft Xbox effort, and demonstrated the Phantom platform at E3.

It also attracted enormous attention before the company had the operating maturity and capital structure required to carry the full weight of that attention.

Phantom at E3 — The Founder Archive15 photographs · click to open

⤢The Phantom Entertainment team — left to right: Royal Obrian; Tim Roberts, CEO of Phantom Entertainment; Kevin Bachus, President and COO (co-founder of the original Microsoft Xbox effort); and Rob Shambro, Sales — with the Phantom console prototype.⤢The Phantom Gaming Service booth at E3 — 'Any game. Any time.'⤢The 'Any Game, Any Time' billboard over the E3 convention-center entrance, South Hall Booth #746.⤢Phantom.net — the service brand rendered into the console's industrial design.⤢The Phantom-liveried Indy car displayed outside the show floor.⤢Show-floor crowds moving through the Phantom booth at E3.⤢The two-story booth structure — a small building erected inside the convention hall.⤢The booth's meeting area, seen from the second level.⤢The booth reception desk on the E3 show floor.⤢Attendees around the Phantom demo stations.⤢The booth at capacity, seen from the internal staircase.⤢Booth staff during the E3 exhibition.⤢Press and attendees gathered in the booth lounge for a demonstration session.⤢Lounge seating and a live demo screen inside the booth.⤢VIP Demo Room 1 — private demonstration space for press and partners.

Phantom contributed lessons in:

• Consumer product design.
• Digital entertainment.
• Living-room interfaces.
• Product launches.
• Media scrutiny.
• Public-company finance.
• The danger of a story moving faster than execution.

GameStreamer

GameStreamer focused on white-label digital distribution.

One reusable infrastructure could power multiple branded storefronts, partners, catalogs and customer experiences.

GameStreamer contributed:

• Multi-tenancy.
• White-label software.
• Digital catalogs.
• Publisher integrations.
• Partner-branded experiences.
• Automated digital fulfillment.
• Reusable commerce infrastructure.

It also reinforced the importance of clear partnership agreements, intellectual-property ownership and alignment among founders and capital partners.

GameStreamer — The Founder Archive3 photographs · click to open

⤢Tim Roberts, GameStreamer and Michael Andretti, Indy Driver⤢Tim Roberts and Dave Hunter, GameStreamer meeting with SEGA London⤢Tim Roberts being interviewed for a customer case study while working for GameStreamer by Savvis. GameStreamer was a large and valued Savvis customer.

CEO Savvy

Founder Recollection

CEO Savvy was another of my ventures from this period—an online media and community effort positioned as “The Voice of CEO’s.” The surviving record is limited, so it belongs here as a modest entry in the broader pattern of building distribution and community platforms, without specific dates, figures or outcomes attached.

Savtira

Savtira expanded the vision beyond games into broader cloud commerce.

• Physical and digital products.
• Marketplaces.
• Payments.
• Logistics.
• Catalogs.
• Subscriptions.
• Partner ecosystems.

Contemporary Reporting

A 2011 profile described me saying that Savtira felt like the culmination of my life at that time—a platform combining much of the experience gained through Savvis, Intira and digital distribution. (CloudCow)

Savtira contributed:

• Cloud commerce.
• Marketplace architecture.
• Catalog orchestration.
• Physical and digital fulfillment.
• Broad platform thinking.
• A permanent respect for modular design, financial controls and operating discipline.

Savtira in Ybor City — The Founder Archive1 photograph · click to open

⤢Left to right: Joe Heinzen, Michael Avina and Tim Roberts with Savtira in Ybor City—the headquarters neighborhood—outfitted in costume-shop finery (Tim in a playing-card jacket and cowboy hat) while preparing for Guavaween, Ybor City's Halloween street festival.

Earlier Recognition: The Savvis and Intira Years

Two framed honors from around the turn of the millennium predate Savtira by more than a decade—they belong to the Savvis and Intira era, when Tim Roberts was in his late twenties. They are collected here as part of the founder archive, accurately dated to their own time rather than the Savtira years.

Recognition — 30 Under 30 & 40 Under 40 (January 2000)2 photographs · click to open

⤢FastForward magazine's “The 30 Under 30 Issue” (January 2000). The framed display names Tim Roberts among the honorees—“30 Under 30 · Tim Roberts · Fast Forward Magazine · January 2000.” A Savvis/Intira-era recognition, years before Savtira.⤢St. Louis Business Journal's “40 under forty” (January 2000)—“40 overachievers under 40.” The profile at lower right features “Tim Roberts, 29.” Another Savvis/Intira-era honor predating Savtira.

StationDigital

StationDigital expanded the experience into:

• Streaming media.
• Advertising.
• Subscriptions.
• Recommendations.
• User engagement.
• Mobile distribution.
• Content rights.

It reinforced the lesson that content, commerce, identity, data and customer experience are not isolated products.

They become stronger when coordinated through a common platform.

StationDigital — The Founder Archive2 photographs · click to open

⤢Timothy Munro Roberts and Andrew Gladney (heir to the 7up fortune) at Rolling Stone headquarters in Manhattan for a StationDigital interview—the same partnership that started Savvis, reunited a media generation later.⤢StationDigital.com on the NASDAQ tower in Times Square—the streaming-media venture announced to the public markets.

HashingSpace and Emerging Infrastructure

Blockchain infrastructure introduced another version of the same pattern:

• A technical system with substantial promise.
• A rapidly changing market.
• Regulatory uncertainty.
• Capital intensity.
• A difference between technical capability and durable business economics.

In the Press: yBitcoin Names Him “Bitcoin’s Mr. Infrastructure”

At the height of the HashingSpace era, yBitcoin magazine (Volume 2, Issue 3) ran a multi-page feature titled “Bitcoin’s Mr. Infrastructure: HashingSpace Corporation’s Timothy Roberts.” The cover story billing read: “HashingSpace Sets Out to Build Infrastructure for Global Adoption.”

The article documented, in print, the pattern this site traces:

• The same instinct, a new industry. “I bought a machine and started mining to see what it was all about. That led to five machines, then ten, then to plans for building a large network once I realized this is essentially what I had been doing for the past 25 years.”
• The economics of infrastructure. “Paying 30 cents per kilowatt hour for power/hosting really put the squeeze on solo miners. That’s when it became apparent to me that they needed data centers with more and cheaper available power than they could get alone.”
• Wenatchee, Washington. HashingSpace hosted ASIC miners from its data center in Wenatchee—home to cheap hydroelectric power and cool weather—offering hashing power at eight cents an hour through bulk purchases negotiated with northwest power providers.
• The full-stack ambition. Mining, wallets, exchanges, ATMs and transaction processing—“the enterprise-grade infrastructure Bitcoin needs for global adoption” (OTCQB: HSHS).
• The backstory in print. The article retold the arc: the St. Louis childhood with a twin brother pulling all-nighters on early computers, the father who was an accomplished Anheuser-Busch executive, Savvis launched at 22 (“We ran the fastest Internet in the world for ten years”), its multi-billion-dollar public-market history and eventual absorption into CenturyLink.
• The Steve Jobs phone call. “My dad knew Jobs, and one day I asked him if he could arrange an introduction for me. My dad said, ‘You don’t need an introduction, just pick up the phone; he’ll talk to you.’ So I did, reached his assistant, and a minute later I was talking to Jobs himself.”

yBitcoin Feature — Volume 2, Issue 35 photographs · click to open

⤢The feature opener: “Bitcoin’s Mr. Infrastructure: HashingSpace Corporation’s Timothy Roberts” — the mining economics, the Wenatchee hydroelectric data center, and the 25-year pattern behind it.⤢Page two: Tim at the power infrastructure. Savvis at 22, the Steve Jobs phone call, and “you have to be willing to lead.”⤢The cover of yBitcoin, Volume 2, Issue 3: “Introducing the Future of Money,” with the HashingSpace feature billed on the front.⤢In This Issue: “68 — HashingSpace Sets Out to Build Infrastructure for Global Adoption.”⤢“A Blueprint for the Bitcoin Ecosystem — Mining. Wallets. Exchanges. ATMs. Transaction Processing.” The HashingSpace ad from the same issue (OTCQB: HSHS).

Read the original yBitcoin feature (PDF, 5 pages) ↗

The HashingSpace era also produced the clearest surviving video record of the high-density design philosophy that began at Intira.

The larger companion design—Fortress One, with seven times the electrical and cooling capacity of traditional facilities and sustainable hydroelectric power—is preserved in the Intira chapter beside the seven-times design account it corroborates.

Failure Was Also Infrastructure

Every successful company contributed reusable ideas.

Every failure contributed operating rules.

Every dispute contributed governance lessons.

Every financial crisis contributed discipline.

Every public mistake contributed humility.

Every legal consequence became part of understanding that technical intelligence does not exempt a founder from responsibility.

My life story includes serious failures and a federal prison sentence.

Built Before Cloud should not hide that chapter or rewrite it into victim mythology.

The responsible version is more useful:

Every Chapter Added a Layer

Then came FUR4.

And for the first time, nearly every layer was required inside one real operating company.

None of Those Companies Was the Final Platform.
Each One Delivered a Piece of It.