Photo: Kevin Richards, managing director of BAM Tech Advisers and chairman of the Bermuda Innovation Technology Association. Retrieved from royalgazette.com

Excerpt from royalgazette.com

Bermuda must practise what it preaches when it seeks to attract new businesses to the island, a panellist told an international audience at the International Tech Summit.

Kevin Richards is the managing director of BAM Tech Advisers and chairman of the Bermuda Innovation and Technology Association.

He is focused on the experience of prospective business owners when they arrive on the island.

Mr Richards explained: “When they get here, they have to have that experience that is authentic to what we have been selling the last seven years.”

He said Bermuda could “own” the space where climate finance and digital assets intersect.

“But if you come here, and energy is not produced by renewables…

“You come here, and you can’t use digital assets for payments anywhere on the island…”

Mr Richards added: “There’s not enough authentic elements of this whole movement that you experience when you come to the island.

“So, we have to have a big, big focus and we have to get all the big companies in Bermuda to invest in the local infrastructure so that we are an authentic actor — and then we can go and dominate the market.

“But until that happens, we are just going to be a big talking shop with people that don’t hire people locally — and we’re never going to have opportunities for the next generation because it’s going to be the same old story that we’ve had the last few generations.”

Mr Richards was appearing on the panel “Onboarding Bermuda and the Next Billion”, where he was joined by Darren Wolfberg, founder, chairman and chief executive of Blockchain Triangle; Alison Swan, a director at the Swan Group; and Nico Gonzalez, chief digital officer at Paradise Mobile.