Why this perspective doesn't come from the lab.
The origin of a voice: Vienna, Wall Street, China, international entrepreneurship, family across continents and the work on freedom, systems and resilience.
“Freedom doesn't just happen. Freedom is built.”
This bio isn't a list of accolades. It explains why Richard doesn't speak about freedom, systems, entrepreneurial energy and superintelligence in the abstract, but from lived experience.
Author, entrepreneur, father, founder.
Richard Frederic Bertossa, born on 12 September 1974 in Vienna, is a dual Austrian-Swiss citizen and a citizen of the city of Geneva.
He is an international entrepreneur, author and founder of the Geneva Institute for ASI Resilience. His work combines international business practice, experience of system breaks, family responsibility and the question of how people stay able to act during the transition to superintelligence.
“The greatest freedom isn't money. The greatest freedom is options.”
Trained at the Federal Higher Technical Institute for the Chemical Industry in Vienna, then the Vienna University of Economics and Business — studying business administration, dropped shortly before the diploma because a Wall Street sales role for AIM Software had become more important.
On Wall Street, Richard led US sales for AIM Software, a Viennese financial middleware firm with Standard & Poor's and Bloomberg as central data partners. AIM Software was already working on neural networks back then — that was his first contact with artificial intelligence, more than two decades ago.
From building in the world to the trail of evidence.
Entrepreneurial origins and responsibility.
Freedom is architecture.
Richard describes freedom neither as a mood nor as a possession. Freedom arises through options, structure, international room to maneuver, experience and the ability not to be shaped unnoticed.
Co-founder of one of Austria's first internet companies before the dotcom crash. Built a manufacturing operation in China. An office in Istanbul with a partner. A call center in the Philippines. Today, operational sites on Isla Margarita and in Florida, with additional staff in Colombia and Vienna.
International clients in Australia, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus and Dubai — advising on asset structure, company architecture, banking, international setup, multi-location strategy, residency, bureaucracy navigation and independence from the system.
Six languages — German, English and Spanish active daily; plus French, Portuguese and Mandarin in travel and business. Lived in thirteen countries: the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Emirates, Austria, Switzerland, the USA, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Cyprus.
Today Richard lives multi-locally, with home bases in the Colombian Andes, the Salzburg mountains, on Isla Margarita, in Siem Reap and in Dubai.
The story behind the voice.
In the memoir Freedom Tests, Richard describes the biographical tests behind his work: Vienna, Wall Street, China, Beirut, Cambodia, Venezuela, Colombia — and the question of how a person stays free when systems exert pressure.
“I understood how it works through movement.”
“Raise world citizens, not system citizens.”