Meet the Team

Honesty. Integrity. Experience.

Bob Wallace

Managing Partner

Bob is the Managing Partner of Strategic Alternatives LLC. After retiring successfully from Silicon Valley high-tech in the 1980's, he began consulting to the portfolio companies of VC Firms through his sole proprietorship, Strategic Alternatives. In 1996, Bob took on his first video game developer as a client, Ensemble Studios which would go on to make the storied Age of Empires franchise for Microsoft. Bob ended up selling all of his consulting hours to Ensemble and acted as their Chief Strategy Officer until enabling the sale of Ensemble to Microsoft. After that Strategic Alternatives began working with numerous clients in a manner that resembles its present advisory business. Prior to creating the Firm, Bob was President of Imagen Corporation, the 1st low-cost laser printer maker. Imagen was based on talent and technology spun-out of Stanford Computer Sciences Department. The technology was Stanford-owned, exclusively-patented image-processing technology which ran on the SUN-board. Bob grew the company to $30M run rate on only $100K of invested capital. They ultimately sold the company after 5 years to QMS (a publicly traded company).


William Rhys Dekle

Partner

Rhys Dekle is a Partner at Strategic Alternatives and leads the firm’s practice from Seattle, Washington. He brings more than 22 years of senior experience in the video game industry, with deep expertise spanning corporate development, studio and IP acquisitions, publishing negotiations, and strategic advisory for founders, boards, and executive teams.

Rhys joined Strategic Alternatives in 2015 after 11 years as a senior executive in business development at Microsoft Game Studios (now Xbox Game Studios). While at Microsoft, he was the original architect of ID@Xbox, the groundbreaking independent developer publishing program that has since distributed many billions of dollars in royalties to thousands of indie studios and small publishers around the world.

In addition to his work on ID@Xbox, Rhys led global content sourcing for the launches of Xbox One and Kinect, and drove business development for the Gears of War franchise in partnership with Epic Games. He oversaw the Xbox licensing team, the eSports business development team, and the Outsourcing and Middleware groups. Rhys played key roles in numerous studio and IP acquisition evaluations and served as the lead for the acquisition of the Gears of War IP from Epic Games in 2014.

Since joining Strategic Alternatives a decade ago, Rhys has advised many of the industry’s top independent studios. In the last three years alone, he has facilitated premium exits for Smoking Gun Interactive ( Keywords), 24 Bit Games ( Annapurna Interactive), Spry Fox ( Netflix), and System Era Softworks (Devolver Digital), among others.

Earlier in his career, Rhys ran a major retail game business with full P&L responsibility at Hollywood Entertainment, then a Fortune 500 company. He previously worked in professional services with McKinsey & Company and at Goldman Sachs.

Rhys holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. in Finance from The Wharton School, and is the video game industry’s only Certified Merger & Acquisition Advisor (CM&AA) through the Association for Corporate Growth / Association of Merger & Acquisition Advisors.

Tim Campbell

Principal

Tim is a Principal of the Firm based in Ennis, Ireland. He joined Strategic Alternatives in 2022. Previously, Tim served as Studio Head & Business Director for Build A Rocket Boy Ltd. While there, he helped the company scale the multi-national studio organization to several hundred employees and secure funding through its Series A, B & C rounds. 

Previously, Tim was the Chief Publishing Officer and Executive Board Member at Gameforge in Karlsruhe, Germany. While there, he was accountable for the P&L for the F2P games portfolio and led the organization through a strategic transition and change management process, resulting in a significant revenue turnaround at the company. Tim has also held senior business development and production roles at companies such as Vigil Games, THQ Inc., Sammy-Sega and Atari-Infogrames. In these positions, he has negotiated numerous deals including intellectual property licenses, development & publishing agreements and the acquisitions of several game studios.

Tim holds a Mergers & Acquisitions Certificate from the Imperial College Business School. He has also served as a Board Member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS).  

Ryan Peterson

Executive in residence

Mr. Ryan Peterson is a Canadian entrepreneur and technology executive known for founding Finger Food Advanced Technology GroupTM , a Vancouver-based technology company that specialized in developing custom augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality solutions for enterprise clients across all industries. 

Under Ryan’s leadership, Finger Food Advanced Technology Group grew exponentially and became known world-wide for its expertise in creating custom solutions that help businesses operate more efficiently, hence driving the adoption of immersive technologies as part of their digital-transformation journey.

In 2020, Finger Food Technology was acquired by Unity, and became Unity’s Global professional services practice also known as Accelerate Solutions. Mr. Peterson scaled Accelerate Solutions to a global team of more than 800 highly-skilled real-time 3D (“RT3D”)experts, serving both Games and Industry clients, and is the driving force behind the adoption of RT3D technologies by hundreds of the most forward-thinking companies in the world. Accelerate Solutions helps these companies solve difficult challenges and create enterprise value, including the creation of operational Digital Twins of their facilities.   

Mr. Peterson has received numerous awards and accolades. He is actively involved in his community, supporting several charitable organizations and serving as a mentor and advisor to young entrepreneurs. He is also an active investor to several technology startups, and serves as a Board and Executive Committee Member of the Business Council of British Columbia. 

Mr. Peterson hosts regular thought-leadership public events, including the “Road To Metaverse Executive Series” at Unity.

“Strategy without process is little more than a wish list.”

— ROBERT FILEK