How Dubai Changed The World In 64 Years

0:00Throughout history, there have been cities that have changed everything. think. Venice dominated trade in the 1400s. New York revolutionized finance in the 1800s. And San Francisco reinvented technology in the 1900s. Today, there's a new frontier city emerging. And according to PitchBook 2024, it's growing faster than any of the others ever did. Dubai, a fishing village that became the next great frontier city. So how did they build a global business hub from scratch? Is this the world's biggest startup success story? Is this the place to be an entrepreneur of the future. This is an incredibly relevant episode right now for what's just happened and what we just recorded on the show last week, which is the UK budget, which made the UK a lot less interesting to start a business.

0:46And it's made the whole environment less exciting for those in business and those international entrepreneurs coming here. Now, complete counter to that is it must be the same for you. But everyone I'm speaking to right now, all my entrepreneur friends are saying, should we move the business to Dubai? It is a life changing experience. I make so much more money. The connectivity is amazing. The freedom's amazing. The healthcare is amazing. I'm not seeing any downside. So I know you love the Burj Khalifa. Have you been to Dubai? Yeah. And it's funny at the beginning of the series, you know, the first interview we did was with Daniel Priestley.

1:23We wanted to talk to him about, teach us about entrepreneurship, teach us about business, talk to us about your expertise. And you know, he pretty much just indoctrinated you and I to be down a rabbit hole on Dubai that we weren't really expecting. And that's how that was our first interview together. Yeah, that's how this relationship essentially started was someone who knows a lot about business and the opportunities talking to us about why Dubai makes more sense currently than the UK. And it was also dependent on the budget. And then obviously, like you say, last week, we just had the budget.

1:50It has been a bit of a disaster for certainly the business environment in the UK. If the point of a country is to attract talent, to suck up talent. As Daniel Preecey said, you want to suck up talent and you want to show that you're the best place to build and create and innovate so that global talent is excited to come to you like Britain has done over the last 10 years. Someone will always be there to try and take your crown. And that's what Dubai is currently doing, right? They're saying that we are a place where we're giving out golden visas. We've got an amazing infrastructure. We're bam smack in the middle of Europe and Asia obviously is quite well suited to multiple different time zones it's starting to get more and more compelling and people like you and me were like previously like no are we're turning our heads and it's interesting we're probably mid-ground right now because we have families and we have pretty strong roots in the UK however if I'm 27 doing what I was doing at 27 running a you know small but fast-growing company let's say I didn't have a wife or I didn't have roots, I would have moved.

2:55I do think there's an angle here, which is like, you know, what are you looking for from a city? So the reason I'm so connected to London and the reason I love London so much, you know, my mum is, she speaks multiple languages. She's a historian. She loves history. So I've grown up loving history. London has an insane history. It's one of the most culturally relevant, interesting places in the entire world. Full stop. Dubai's pitch is very different. In a thousand years, people will look back on the history and culture of Dubai that started now, relatively speaking in historical terms you know in the last hundred years and i was one of the first citizens of the great city of the future which i think is a really interesting positioning so when i went to dubai i had a lot of people telling me i went for business meetings i went for investment meetings um in my last company and a lot of people be like oh you you won't like it it's not you it's hot you know um it's you know there's just big buildings you're from london you won't like it and usually that's a red flag to me anyone tells me i won't like something i'm like, well, we'll see about that.

3:50I landed and I was like, what's not to like anyone who has admiration for the sheer genius and the ambition that goes into engineering and architecting those buildings, those designs, that skyline is beautiful. Those buildings are stunning. And it's a very different kind of visual masterpiece. But I think it's really dishonest to pretend that it's not a masterpiece. It is insane. People drew that on paper and then they literally, through sheer will and ingenuity from a swamp wasteland, managed to create those insane buildings, including, as you mentioned, the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, which I've been to the top of, taken a photo.

4:35You can see, you feel like the whole Middle East are on there. It is unreal. What do you think? Have you been? Have you been to the Burj Khalifa? Have you been to Dubai? I have been, yeah. And I think, for me, I actually thought it was awesome. I just thought the whole experience was so cool. And the network there was crazy for what I'm doing. And I just thought like I had an enormous amount of fun. And probably if left to my own devices, as my wife knows, we would move there. Not forever, but I would move there for five years. Because why wouldn't I try and have five totally transformational years of my life?

5:06Because I can always come back. And I think that's what's so smart in how they've designed what they have designed in terms of like policies and attraction is you can get super ambitious people who come from Europe, the States, whatever, UK, and we can go there five, six, seven years, we can build there, build infrastructure, create jobs, create outcomes, and then obviously can leave. I think this is the key point. If you are going to design a city like a startup founder would design a product. Yeah. So then let's take Dubai as a product. You would design three things. You'd want to make sure that you've designed an easy way in for people, an easy way out for people.

5:39And then most importantly, a reason to stay. Yeah, because that kind of like the freedom, you know the ability to know that i can get there easily but also not feel like you're trapped so in some countries you're like i get there easily but am i ever leaving so therefore i'm not taking the risk i don't want to go this is like designed to be easy in easy out but then actually so alluring that you're like wait why am i leaving yeah just stay and that is that is by design yeah that doesn't happen accidentally so let's talk about the growth of dubai so in the 1950s they were a fishing village with 20 ,000 people, which is insane.

6:10And you're in a position now where that as an idea is unrecognizable to the current state quo, like it's absolutely wild. And so that is, they're now in a position where they have 3.3 million people there, which is a 165 times increase in population in what's that 70 years, they must be building and they must be planning non-stop, always, continuously, forever. There must be no moment where that place sits still. And that must be in itself such a huge undertaking in terms of human capital and labor to build these buildings in 70 years. I think what I would say to everyone, and this is definitely how I think about Dubai, is obviously from our point of view now, we're not going in the ground floor.

6:58We're not there early, take advantage of everything. However, if you just look at how fast they've grown in what such a short time it is and you're thinking i want a place that's gonna you know pay me a huge amount of return in x many years this is definitely the place because you could you could you could get in now you could be involved in property or business or whatever and in 10 years time it will be unrecognizable again yeah i think the thing is you know they're expected to grow their population to 5.8 million so from 20 000 to 5.8 million you know that is bringing a lot of people in but the most important thing is like who what type of people what kind of people are you attracting into your ecosystem so if you think about startup founders over the last 20 years the dream in theory has been go to go to the valley go to san francisco right now you know i guess my joke there would be right now san francisco starting to resemble more of a fishing village it's just in decline yeah right and it's a really good example you know empires rise and fall the san francisco empire has been driven by political decisions that have not been and and like a dystopian wealth imbalance yeah but there has driven the homelessness crisis in san francisco is insane right so it has driven that city into a really poor state of disrepute that isn't attractive to people that want to build big ambitious careers you go to dubai yeah you barely see any litter everything is clean it's shiny like they take a no-nonsense approach.

8:26And pride, they take pride in how their city looks. And that's a decision. There are systems in place to say, this is what we represent. And that makes it attractive to people. Again, you're going to move to San Francisco with your young family or to Dubai with your young family. Dubai is looking a lot more popular. There's no chance I'd move to San Francisco. No, me neither right now. There's just no way I would do it. That's my point. given the choice of the two yeah as a entrepreneur with a young family which of the two yeah makes more sense but i think you're going to build more wealth i think you're going to live a happier life probably dubai it's more of a push because i have friends that have gone to dubai in normal jobs and now they have like a full staff that supports them in their lives they have incredible friendships and healthcare and they make a fortune so it's like what's not to like so in the 1950s we're a fishing village, a pearling, you know, collecting pearls.

9:19And by 1958, the new leader, Sheikh Rashid came in, and there was a very clear pivot in terms of what they want to do with Dubai. And that was to create a city of the future. And most people won't know this, but they didn't actually discover the oil until after the vision for the city had been crystallized, which is, you know, you want to build the city of the future, and then you strike oil. absolutely insane the investment that they could then put into growing the city would have you know gone through the roof that's ridiculous yeah because i think you know a you kind of got to be unlucky i suppose in the middle east to not have a place surrounded by oil but it's not guaranteed yeah it's amazing that they'd have had this um industrial vision for what they can do and just also like the you know talk about visionary founders yeah right so the shaykh imagine how crazy you have to sound to be like we're going to do this thing here in a fishing village 20 000 people like the original people they must have been like this guy's nuts but it's it's amazing to think about it like a founder and like a pivot because you would have to be if you were designing a city you'd have to be super intentional about the things i would need to make my city have to attract the best people in the world because your city will be built by the best people in the world and so they're not there how do you bring them in and so what are the things that they did to ensure that they had the biggest pull on talent globally for the last 60 years the thing i really love about this story before we get into like shaykh rashid's vision it's kind of like you know you mentioned a pivot and pivot's so typical in a startup founder's journey right but you kind of think of pivots more like a tech founder yeah it's part of dubai that's kind of like this tech company startup vision around a city yeah and i suppose that to the first point I think was so fundamental to the vision that has made it become so successful is recognizing that the pearling industry and the fishing industry would never have been enough to create significant economic wealth and dynamic enough and even when they've discovered the oil they don't want to become reliant solely on the oil and therefore use it more as a as a tool to build diversification to build infrastructure and to effectively become a hub you know in a specific part of the world that gives you access to so many different places.

11:37Sheikh Rashid's vision really relies on three things there's economic diversification an infrastructure first strategy and the open trade policy so these are sort of like the pillars the core foundations that he sets out in his plan and galvanizes people around so then infrastructure first strategy I'm going to get my notes up here so we can get this right. He initiated the Dubai Creek Dredging Project in 1959, which was a major first move. It focused on creating trade infrastructure before the demand existed. That's pretty forward-looking. That's long-term thinking. Right, there's long-term thinking and it takes serious investing, right?

12:13So he believed in the whole build-it-and-they-will-come philosophy, which as a founder, you were always told don't do. You were always told don't do that. That is the number one philosophy that is guaranteed to create failure. But if you are seriously visionary and want to go for it, you kind of have to say you've got to invest. If you've got deep enough pockets, and you can create something that is of the future in the perfect geographical location in the world, and you know that you have the pockets to sustain the period, then you know you can create a hub of activity. And then the third part, obviously, the open trade policy.

12:47So this is probably the thing that Dubai is most known for, I suppose. They maintain Dubai's traditional free port status, which kept taxes low. So what does that bring in? Merchants. Merchants, revenue, high skilled talent, people that want to build all the stuff that Britain is rejecting right now. You bring in the people who want to build their fortunes and build them quickly. Exactly. It attracts foreign traders and businesses and they create policies to protect merchant rights as well. So they're literally basically already laying down the foundations to say this is a city that means business for the future.

13:19These are the foundations people at UNI look for places that welcome us with those opportunities. We seek them out. And Dubai nailed all of those. So they've made this pivot away from pearls, as you mentioned. But here's what's genius. They didn't just change what they were doing. They changed how everyone did business. How so? Well, they basically said, we're going to build the infrastructure first, right? Like a platform, we're going to build the basics down and the users will come. So in this sense, they made a big bet on themselves. They built out incredible infrastructure. I think this is an incredibly big bet, but also at a time where this is pre-discovering oil.

13:58And so this is making huge financial bets pre-knowing that they were going to strike oil, which I think contextually shows you the commitment to the vision of building the city, which is the big Dubai Creek project is before they hit oil. I think that's just insane. Yeah, do you know how much that cost them? I have no idea. so uh 600 000 pounds which in the 1950s was an insane amount of money okay they actually had to borrow 400 000 pound from their neighbors to do it i mean that's insane to literally dredge up a dredge something up creek yeah in the middle of nowhere before you've built the city you know like it's absolutely insane and you know you're taking out a loan to build the infrastructure to then go and do your product and your neighbors are giving you the money as well to do this and they're going cool what have you got and they're like nothing yeah we've got no businesses we've got no commitments there's no one here no one wants this yeah yeah but we we we're pretty confident yeah it's wild isn't it this is the friends and family round yeah family round except the pitch is there's this creek and like and no users i can't believe they got it i mean thankfully their family life good salesman yeah i mean must be the world's best salesman so that's their friends and family round so i guess what's their seed round tell me so it's a casual little project called the Jebel Alley Port, which is literally the largest man-made harbour in the world.

15:17Casual. They don't mess around here, do they? Yeah, the shoe fits. And the Series A is, we just found oil.

15:26Literally, it's like the most magical startup story. Yeah, it's crazy. So Chris, what did your dad do when you were growing up? He was an entrepreneur. He was a commercial property broker. So he helped brands find incredible properties. Inspiring? incredibly inspiring um definitely like best friend most inspiring dude in my life uh definitely the reason my brothers and I are entrepreneurs yeah that's nice I'd say exactly the same about my dad which is fortunate um he was in fashion manufacturing my best friend totally inspiring absolutely loved every minute I could spend with him and absolutely the reason I'm an entrepreneur that being said I wouldn't say that either of these people are like you know uh intimidating dating you know what would you do for example if your father turns a 20 000 person fishing village into a global trade hub like if that was your dad what what kind of life would you be having my dad had built to buy i don't know if i would have ever worked i think it just inspires them to build bigger yeah that's exactly what happened in this story so enter stage left his son shik muhammad who effectively takes on the mantle from his father and says hold my coffee so obviously this is hot off the press for you and I we were talking about this other day with the UK budget and we're talking about how the UK has had you know third most unicorns in the world in London in the last sort of decade or so and that is such an impressive thing and how we're super worried that that will not continue in the same way and I think when you look at this and the intentionality of this I love this so Sheikh Mohammed comes in with the D33 economic agenda what's that which has economic targets which are and I love the ambition of these double GDP by 2033, create 30 new unicorns.

17:09I love that. Yeah. And therefore you have to make the environment right for it. Right. So double GDP by 33, 30 new unicorns and attract 65 ,000 digital professionals. And I just love that because it's the intentionality around where technology is going, where the world is going. And so if you were to say one place in the world right now that digital creator, new digital businesses goes, they go to Dubai. Yeah. I think it goes beyond digital creator though because that is thinking a bit small for dubai so their vision is kind of like around building unicorns there's not many unicorns that come from the digital creator space as much as we love it that's a really great lifestyle place and dubai is a great place to have a great lifestyle but they're a bit more ambitious than this they want to focus on fintech the digital economy space exploration sustainable technology ai and robotics like these are serious industries of growth for the future another great example of diversifying way off oil there's no fishing there's no pearls and there's no oil anymore this is AI and robotics and space and this is basically what you and I were asking for the other day from our budget like I want the focus to be on these things I want fintech focus digital economy space exploration sustainable technology AI and robots I want the UK government to say this is what we're putting all of our money in focus towards yeah Rachel Reeves are you listening yeah yeah can you tax us more you go and look at somewhere like Dubai they are taking a similar playbook to Silicon Valley to London to these other global hubs and saying what can we do so they obviously have something their golden visas um so the golden visa program benefits we'll talk about very shortly but they have so much going for them and i suppose their narrative and also that sort of cultural movement right there's there's an energy going towards the idea of moving to dubai do you know how many of their how much of their population is actually foreign i genuinely don't actually 85 i mean it makes sense because if you're gonna achieve all of these crazy objectives, you need to bring so many people, which is quite an abnormal thing to pick up your roots from where you are and to move to a place like Dubai.

19:09You're not going to do it unless it's super exciting and motivating. And so you're going to need to draw to you an enormous amount of people. And so I just feel this intentionality is perfect. It's also really interesting because if you think about immigration, you know, immigration is basically the number one hottest topic on debates in America or the UK and Europe, because there isn't good thinking about immigration. What type of immigrants do we want into the country to suck up talent and intelligence and the best of to make our society better? And in Dubai, however they're designing theirs, they're going the other way.

19:44They're saying, immigrants, give us more immigrants. 85 % of our whole entire economy is based on having the world's best immigrants and turning them into proud citizens of Dubai building the future. So it really is my smartest and most ambitious friends in the corporate world and in the startup world who have gone. So where does that leave me? Exactly where you are.

20:10Okay, so I want to join the ranks of your friends, you know, maybe leave London and go to Dubai. The things that I need as someone going is I need it to be easy. I need to know that they're attracting the right people and that I can get there easily. It's not an enormous faff. So that's where this golden visa comes in, right? That's exactly what we've done. So they've made it so that you can have a long-term residency. So you can go and properly commit to a period of your life. So five to 10 years. Um, and I think that's very important for young, um, professionals, young couples to go, like how many couples do you know who have gone for me?

20:46Honestly, so many have left now and they have like a perfect life set up there and so if you want those great people which you do you want young professionals in your economy you're going to have to provide them with that you don't need to be sponsored to get a visa and so again you don't have that sort of red tape and infrastructure problem that you have in so many other places around the world and so the key is as well obviously you can bring your whole family and they are giving out so many of these so 2023 they gave out 158 000 golden visas which i think is absolutely insane the other thing is when you're bringing a family you only care about two things really which is is it safe and is there going to be good education yeah and it's a yes and yeah healthcare education prosperity basically yeah and i think i think to care about your family more than i do i only pick two yeah healthcare would be nice yeah yeah healthcare is good yeah i hope my wife doesn't listen but i think i think to your point earlier and you made it you made this point a lot about like migration immigration etc is that you you want the right people coming you don't want you to attract all the wrong people and so eligible categories are entrepreneurship investors tech investors innovators scientists researchers uh outstanding students and cultural and creative talents and so you're just bringing together the most exciting forward-thinking people into a city that's got everything that you need that's a key point there because i think that actually a lot of people hear this stuff and they think about dubai as entrepreneurs investors and money people finance that's those are like very commonly the reasons that people say don't go to dubai because there's just about money and it's just about business but actually the intentionality is you invite the creative talents you you invite scientists you're trying to literally create a culture, right?

22:33Like a 360 dimensional... Ecosystem, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's where, when designing the city of the future, you need to make sure that you're handing out visas to those types of people because they will provide a lot of colour to the city. Totally. If you think about designing a city like this, you've got to have the right structures in place for a whole bunch of things, but imagine what type of person leaves, say, London. You know, you just mentioned earlier your family, the culture the history everything that's safe that we know about the uk imagine what type of person goes to dubai yeah um on this promise because that's kind of what it is this is promise of ambition the promise that you're going to go and live in the city of the future and participate and contribute to that vision it's the same kind of people that left to go to california from like you know the midwest or went to new york you know these are explorers yeah people with ambition and ideas and they're adventurous and those are the type of people who create the future they don't just perpetuate the past yeah and if you think about then the like you say was 150 000 plus visas that are given out to attract the world's most ambitious and adventurous explorers who want to create new like new dynamics and new industries yeah just imagine the type of people that you surround yourself with i suppose like i the advice like i said like if if if it'd been up to me my wife and I would have gone.

23:55And I think that I would say to young professionals now or entrepreneurs who, if your life isn't moving at the pace that you want, like move where you are, like move to somewhere like that. And you will feel the pace around you because as you say, it's a very specific type of person that says I will uproot and I will move to this place and I will accept these risks and I will challenge myself. And if you are that person, I would say like, why not? Because you can always come back. It's not, you know, it's not like cutting off ties forever. I would, I would give it a go. And it's a big deal to move your family.

24:27It's not a big deal to move yourself. Totally. Like the second you get a family, a house, a mortgage, the second you get kids, your roots are just much firmer. And so if you can do it before you that amazing, if you do have a family, you know, you can always move back. I mean, there's so many things we haven't even discussed, right? Um, they've got these economic free zones. They've got ignite. I didn't even talk about that just very quickly you know they got um their goal with ignite which is uh a platform launch essentially to drive even more innovation you talked about those 30 33 uniform uniforms they want to do so they got a plan for a hundred thousand startups they're bringing in 5 000 vcs 5 000 mentors 500 corporate partners and 100 million dollars in perks you know they're already ranked the second in in the middle east in the sort of young people go work there like listen to that and go work there i'm not even joking it's ridiculous yeah like you don't get that in london not in that sort of proximity no 5 000 yes wild i want to go i mean i didn't even know there were 5 000 vcs in the world no mentally maybe they're all moving to dubai and that's the thing so look there's stuff that we haven't even had a chance to cover um but i think the overarching point is if you are designing a frontier city what are the absolute must-have ingredients and does Dubai have those ingredients is it categorically right to land it in the same category as London as San Francisco as Venice is that reasonable and I think on everything that we've been saying like absolutely yes and more I feel like it's almost in a sense barely begun like I feel like the impact it's had an ordinary person's life the impact it's had on my life is that in the last three years, lots of friends have left for Dubai.

26:11And maybe in the last five years, a couple of friends went there before. But I feel like the next 20 years, you're going to see unbelievable growth from Dubai. So many more people being drawn there. And if you are thinking about starting an amazing business or building an unbelievable career, it has to be the only place right now to consider. I think the other thing that's bad is it's quite meta. you know if you love startup stories and you love innovation and you love being around people who are adventurous and think about the future and basically think about possibility you know they drive each other in their conversations to think about what could be versus just saying no that's not possible um everything about dubai's story is just setting the scene for this like big vision this big picture thinking, the idea that anything is possible.

27:02Look, if you can turn a fishing village in the middle of nowhere into the epicentre of future vision, culture, architecture, business, finance from a wasteland in the desert, it is in itself evidence that anything is possible. So why not surround yourself with the kind of people who really think that's possible? You'd literally walk around the streets there and be like, I'm living in evidence of this being possible. I'm Chris and I'm Dan. Thank you for watching Sequel Leaders. Please like and subscribe.