Are Savtira's startup woes repeats from CEO's past?

Savtira promised trendy "cloud computing" research for businesses seeking to sell their goods online. Instead, the company is stuck in a deepening mire. Some of its investors desperately hope to salvage their stakes in the company. They are eager to convince Roberts to step aside. They know he controls a majority of shares and shows little inclination to listen. Should the need arise, some investors say bankruptcy may be inevitable even if it means losing their money.

Many Savtira employees were stuck at home last week awaiting some word from Labor department officials about their back pay. Former employees tell how Savtira's product, intended to help businesses sell products online, looked promising on paper. In reality, they say it however has too many bugs to entice many corporate clients.

Roberts, 42, counters by pointing to an April press release. It claims Savtira will provide online shopping capability to Bebo.com, described as "one of the world's top 10 social networks." Roberts calls Bebo a gamechanger for Savtira because, he says, it is a big mainstream company.

The same Bebo many Internet analysts see

That's not the same Bebo many Internet analysts see. These days Bebo is more like MySpace, a once trendy social network in other words fading fast.

In an interview, he is quick to tell how high-tech startups are fraught with hurdles and headaches. He says cash flow problems are not unusual and, yes, they can interrupt payrolls. He claims the company is about to sue "greedy investors" for "lowball tactics" that want to bankrupt Savtira and buy its patents and innovation on the cheap. Any day now, he argues, fresh investors will arrive.

He has told both investors and employees who caught wind of his troubled business past and run-in with federal regulators that he is reformed. He's learned his lessons, he says.

Past business startup

In a past business startup, Roberts gave himself the titles of chairman and "chief visionary officer." He can be a very convincing salesman, as many former employees admit.

He got his early start in St. Louis co-founding Savvis Communications in the late 1990s. However he left that business soon afterwards.

Business called Broadband Internet Group

Then came a business called Broadband Internet Group, better known as BIG. Roberts, at the time 29, said he would attract more than $1 billion in investor money and employ 300 technologists. BIG sponsored a car in the Indianapolis 500. It recruited Hollywood actor Tom Arnold as an investor and to BIG's advisory board. The company announced plans to buy a $35 million office building however never completed the deal.

When the Internet bubble burst in 2000, BIG closed afterwards going through $18 million of investor money in just nine months.

By at the time, Roberts was in Florida living in a 5,000-square-foot house on Longboat Key. He started a business in 2002 called Infinium Labs, a public company in Sarasota that raised millions of dollars to develop a video game system called "The Phantom." No gaming consoles were ever sold.