u/khanye123

Hi guys, I help grow businesses in the GCC. Most of our clientele comes from LinkedIn outreach and referrals. We have a serious on-boarding process.

Curious to know what everyone else is doing.

According to our data, reply rate is lower than Europe and North America :)

But our response on organic social media is much higher.

People in the UAE purchase based on value and delivery, not adspend and fluff.

I was at ADIS this week.

The news is loud.

Everyone outside the UAE is watching and waiting for things to fall apart.

My clients were hiring more people.

Holding companies that were cautious six months ago were openly looking for partners. Budgets were up. Conversations were serious. Decisions were being made on the spot.

This is what people outside the Gulf don't understand about the UAE:

This country doesn't react. It builds.

While the rest of the world pauses, hedges, and waits for certainty, the UAE treats uncertainty as a competitive advantage. Because when everyone else freezes, the ones still moving capture everything.

I've seen this pattern before. Every time the region gets loud, the UAE gets quieter and more focused. Not reckless. Focused.

The founders here aren't ignoring the geopolitical situation. They're just refusing to be paralyzed by it.

That's not arrogance. It's actually discipline.

And it's exactly why businesses built in the UAE tend to outlast businesses built almost anywhere else in the world.

The bombs don't land here. But the opportunities do.

There's a word people use loosely when describing business builders in the UAE: entrepreneur.

It doesn't quite fit.

What the UAE produces is something closer to a tiger. Obsessed with growth. Relentless by nature. Because the culture demands it.

And I mean that with the deepest respect.

The UAE has engineered an environment where stagnation is simply not an option. When you are surrounded by people moving fast, building aggressively, and competing at every level, you either match the pace or you fall behind. There is no comfortable middle ground here.

This isn't pressure in the negative sense. It's a feature, not a bug.

That cultural force (call it ambition by design) does three things most business environments in the world fail to do:

1. It eliminates wasted time. When your environment is constantly moving, idle time feels wrong. You are pushed, almost unconsciously, to fill every hour with something that compounds.

2. It makes competition feel natural. In most places, openly competing with peers is considered aggressive. Here it is expected, respected, and reciprocated. Everyone is sharpening each other.

3. It attracts more tigers. The UAE doesn't just produce this mindset locally, it imports it globally. The people who self-select to build here are already wired for growth. The environment then amplifies what they already have.

I've spoken with founders across multiple countries. The difference I notice most in UAE-based builders isn't their idea or their capital. It's their sense of urgency. There is a baseline intensity here that I haven't found anywhere else.

The UAE didn't become what it is by accident lol. It was built with intention, speed, and an uncompromising standard for excellence, set from the very top. That culture flows downward and outward into every business, every boardroom, every conversation.

So no, I wouldn't call them entrepreneurs.

Tigers is closer xD

The stress of being a founder, running a business, be in charge of paying salaries and making sure everything is afloat is an absolute nightmare to go trough. Especially in 2026. When every social media creator makes it look like money is growing on trees. We have lost clients, made mistakes, spent sleepless night and gone through a fair bit of anxious days.

But as I write this. I feel incredibly grateful to have found a community of people like me. People who don't just want to make the world a better place, but actually work for it. It is no secret that to have complaints of this sort is to be very privileged. I no longer envy people bigger than me doing 200M-300M in revenue per year. The toxicity, the betrayal, the humiliation is probably too much for some people to deal with.

But stress is in the mind. The mind is probably the organ in the human body that a person can control. Delayed gratification is the name of the game. We will not give up. We will bounce back further than anyone has ever expected. We will surprise the naysayers and non-believers. I was called delusional before I made any real money with this internet thing. I started with a few thousand dirhams and am outcompeting legends in the game. People that have degrees, extremely blessed backgrounds and even bigger businesses.

We just got ghosted in the middle of a $1.1M per year contract with a top international holding group. We came so close. It's kinda my fault for expecting too much. There are no commitments unless the payment has been made and such things are a common occurrence in business.

Thank you to all the people that do their best to stay sane and help out other people as much as they can. You guys are a true blessing of God.

If you're a founder, business owner, employee, just got fired or are just going through a rough time. Feel free to reach out. We are all in this together.

It's just a bad day, not a bad life.

May Allah grant us His infinite mercy🤍

Hi guys. I am a retired Counter Strike player (28M)

I started at 11 while playing 1.6 and eventually graduated to CS go when I was in university. Played a few tournaments while IGLing with my team on a semi pro level in Malaysia.

Here's is it's link with my business. When I played CS I would start before sunset and leave well after sunrise. Constantly tweaking strategies learning new things and implementing them fast. I use this same obsessive strategy with my business. I gamified our content and outreach, revenue targets and skills.

At first I sucked, horribly. The I got better overtime, the more I played, the better I got. he bigger the break, the more the rust I developed when I came back

So if you're a hardcore obsessive gamer and have this ability to stay locked in over a longer period of time. Please go ahead and start a business regarding something to your interest and where there is saturation. Because you can use the same skills to rank up in business :) because those that are not obsessed will let their motivation go down and lose to you in competition hahahah!

P.S if you're interested, I'll give you my Steam account. It has skins worth like $50 and will unlock the 10 year coin in a few months :)

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen. This post is pure value that AI cannot generate. I bring that value to you personally.

Artificial Intelligence is promoted and used in the UAE like nowhere else. We have moved on from using Google to the likes of Claude, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok and Gemini. But this is not the message of my post today.

Today we discuss why I have 100s of AI agency founders complaining about behind unable to sell their service to the mass market of the UAE and the core reason behind it.

We live in an era of abundant information. Every step we are taking as human beings is being promoted or discouraged by the internet. Everyone, now walks with the ability to get a phd in their pocket

Small businesses make around 94% of ALL businesses in the UAE (May 2026)

All businesses in the UAE making less than 5M a year have pretty simple operations with a small team and some internet presence. AI agencies allow businesses to secure leads, essentially save time for the managers, sales people and even the founder. That all is great.

But these small businesses are mostly run by expatriates that make 90% of the residential population of the UAE. As a business growth operator services like SEO, online marketing, accountancy and social media marketing are great. But AI is going to take time to penetrate the behavior of small business owners in the UAE.

You see, these expatriates business owners, mostly of which are older people make purchases closest to investments. Even the hires are exponential investments. Let me explain; A small business owner will hire people that are coachable to eventually bring in sales and directly increase revenue. AI can do many things, but not spark conversations, bring in leads and get other people to genuinely inquire about your products and business.

I have spoken to Ai agency owners that are Emirati, Saudi, Indian, North American and European. The only ones making money are selling to people that are interested in acquiring data, monitoring consumer behavior and staying up to date with all the trends related to tech and investments.

So if you are selling AI services or are thinking of selling it in the UAE. Please remember one thing. Not all prospects really need what you are helping them implement at the moment, but there are prospects out there, they're just not everywhere yet. Keep reaching out to people. Keep booking appointments. Keep posting about your stuff. Remember, one reddit post isn't going to make you millions, it could get you good impressions but it'll not keep you on anyone's radar unless you nosedive into the business.

Hey everyone! I'm u/khanye123, a founding moderator of r/EntrepreneurshipUAE.

This is our new home for all things related to Entrepreneurship and Business in the UAE. We're excited to have you join us!

What to Post
Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, photos, or questions about. Feel free to ask for advice, share common strategies and take what can benefit you the most.

Community Vibe
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting.

How to Get Started

1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.
2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.
3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.
4. Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/EntrepreneurshipUAE amazing.

When we started this community I wasn't sure anyone would show up.

They did.

If you're building something in the UAE, asking questions, sharing wins, navigating the hard parts; this community is yours.

Still early. Still growing. But something real is happening here.

Welcome to everyone who found their way here.

Hey everyone. This is going to be a long one so I just want to say that everyone is unique and has unique experiences so If you have a problem, please consider visiting a professional or reaching out to anyone you can.

I was born and brought up in the UAE. I went abroad for my uni and in 2020, my family was struggling so I had to come back home and help out. Financially, socially and mentally everyone in my family was not doing great.

I was never the brightest or the most mature or witty. I have always been an expat and my mum left when I was 9 years old so have never been comfortable and always been the kid other parents warned their own kids about.

But in 2020 I was convinced that the world and every positive thing we knew about it was going to end. My family moved back leaving me working here by myself. I never had many friends growing up so there was not much hope I had in anything. Never been too religious, never been proud of anything I'd done. Just barely moving by.

Until one day in 2021 I ran into an old customer who asked me certain questions pertaining to business and I gave her advice to close down her physical store to save cash and just helped her set up her online store. About 9 months later she called me up showing how they'd been very successful. She was ready to get married, settle down and everything had eventually started to look up for her. She had just gotten a drivers license and I went with her to look for a nice C250 and she loved that as well.

While most of this stuff was happening, my life (statistically) had been the same. Go to sleep, wake up, fuel my newly found doom scrolling addiction and work when it was time to work. But I was distracted from my heightened level of anxiety, didn't care enough to worry for myself and genuinely felt great. Sitting in traffic, waiting in queues for fuel and being honked at was no problem for me.

So I chased this feeling, I reached out to people I used to know. I helped out whoever needed help. Sometimes it was cash, sometimes it was a referral and sometimes it was just somebody needing me to be there for them.

A couple of months passed by and I had fully changed my demeanour. I went from being socially awkward and unable to smile in public due to the terrible fear of being judged, to now smiling at everyone, learning how to greet people in Tagalog, Arabic, French and Malayali :)

I did some soul searching and read religious texts and decided that I am at peace with what goes on around me. All I needed was wisdom and perspective. It helped me in my good days and my sick days as well. Fast forward now I operate as a growth operator for businesses. I get DM's on X, LinkedIn, and even here on reddit. I tell people what I know, it genuinely helps them but unfortunately they cannot replicate the services I provide because of the position I am in.

On paper life isn't perfect. I've had to attend the funerals of too many people around me. I still get called ugly, short, weak, slim and overall not great to have to put up with, by people who are close to me and who aren't xD

But I do not care. The world is bigger than one single body, pattern, behavior and the future is unpredictable enough to completely change the situation you are in. You just gotta be able to tell yourself that if you're in a tough situation, you will make it out somehow. Don't be paranoid, practice pronoia.

Pronoia helped me go from making a 5k salary to now aiming to make 95x that amount. To be happy even if I take the metro back home. Build muscle, learn more skill and expose myself to threats. Make smarter hires, allow myself to handle more stress (without losing much hair ahahhaha)

The purpose of this text is to not show myself as better than anyone else, or show myself as worse compared to anyone either. It is just to remind you that if the world is bigger than you, then it is bigger than your problems. If you are reading this and struggling with anything, it is a good idea to try and do something worthwhile because after a short while, these complex times will give you something else to worry about. Life is meant to be a series of problems that you are meant to pass by. Either you solve them by yourself, or they are solved for you by someone else. Whatever you face on a day to day basis, trust me, there is someone out there who has it worse. Or even if someone out there has it better than you, they are making it a lot worse for themselves just by obsessing over it.

If you don't have anyone to reach out to, are too anxious like I've been before, you can reach out to me, I may be a complete stranger but sometimes you just need to get it out of your system and let it go. Let go of your past, let go of what is worrying you and even if you're not happy. It may be a good time to start pretending like you're happy. Either you'll forget that you're pretending or you'll actually convince yourself of your happiness. Whatever it takes tp keep you moving.

For legal reasons, this is not Mental Health advice and I urge anyone that is having problems that they cannot dictate to reach out to someone and if it is really getting out of hand, you can dial: 800-725462 (800-SAKINA)

Hi everyone. Like I said, I want to work with real marketing agencies because I have a digital product in the works. I am looking for long term effective commitments. Budget is less than Dh200k per year. Expectations are relatively higher.

We would want to spend money on Ads a few months from now. thanks