If Dubai were at a poker table ...

If Dubai were at a poker table, she will be that one person who would aptly quote, “It’s not about the cards you’re dealt, but how you play the hand.”

I’m writing this post from a coffee shop in Dubai. Plus over the last six months, I have been to Dubai atleast once every month. So this post is likely to be prone to recency bias. 

While the rest of the Middle East continued to be extremely reliant on oil economy, the UAE leaders were a lot more forward-thinking in diversifying the economy. Among others, policies such as free trade zones and zero income tax have proven to be extremely effective in attracting investments and talent respectively. Having said that, it would be misleading to think that Dubai’s dependency on oil is only as much as around 5%, the oil revenue as a fraction of GDP. Not long ago, when Dubai hit the economic crisis in 2007-10, it had to turn to Abu Dhabi’s petrodollars to get bailed out. Much like Hong Kong relies on mainland China for investments and transactions, Dubai does so on neighboring Middle East, which in turn is oil-dependent.

With that background, what’s fascinating to me is a more recent phenomenon. Dubai is now waking up to the start-up wave. There has been start-up activity in the region for a while, but now venture capital as an industry has started taking notice. Besides the traditional venture capital, the business conglomerates setting up their venture arms parked with couple of hundred million dollars to experiment, will make for interesting times for the aspiring entrepreneurs in the region, and the start-up ecosystem at large. If you begin to chart the cash flow, it’s oil money getting invested in new-age startups in the quest for multifold returns.

The port-city nature of Singapore, the hustle of Mumbai, and the glitz of New York has always been here in Dubai. It’s now time for the ‘change the world’ vibe of San Francisco to set in. 

Far-fetched, yes. Improbable, no.