I just came back from Dubai and spent enough time gathering the information I need to gather for the decisions I have to make. As you know, Tokyo Japan is no longer a viable global hub destination for us or you either, due to the travel ban restrictions that they still have in place. I have to look for a new location and Dubai has been recommended as the number one destination for us by my colleagues around the world.

I went to Dubai and made it both a vacation and checked if Dubai is a place, a place I feel I can situate myself. In this article, I want to talk about what I observe about Dubai and then talk about what future plans if any I have for Dubai. I also want to share my thoughts on brothas and sistas running their mouth loosely about Dubai like they can globe trot and roll around in Dubai like they talking – no they cannot. Let’s get into it.

Awesome Global Black Diaspora in Dubai.

I was taken aback by how friendly and cool Black people from Africa who are working in Dubai were to me. Nothing like the Africans we got here in America acting stuck up and looking down on the same ADOS they benefitting from ADOS blood, sweat, and tears. None of the Africans in Dubai acted like they didn’t want to deal with us, they were friendly and treated me with professionalism, and the ones working at a business – delivered good service and this is something you brothas and sistas have to go see to believe.

This was the first time ever I went to a place where ADOS and Africans had interacted like this in a genuine positive manner. I see a lot of promise in Dubai as a true place for the African Diaspora to meet and collaborate. Let’s keep this in mind because we will bring this up later. Oh, one more thing – a lot of fine, shapely, modest sistas there enjoying Dubai from Africa, Europe, and America acting polite, humble, and cool with a brotha – that was very refreshing compared to what I have to put up with all these sistas who moved to Atlanta from up North acting like she all that to us high-valued Black men.  

Developer Financed Real Estate

One thing to watch out for is when you land at Dubai Airport or travel out to Jumeirah beach or the mall, you may run into pushy real estate salespeople trying to get you to tour their homes under construction with a luxury car transport from your hotel and back. I had a full schedule but if any of you travel with your significant other to Dubai, it is always a nice couple thing to go house hunting together.

What I have seen in Dubai as a trend is that housing in Dubai is where you get a house the same way you rent an apartment – you just start paying on it month to month. You need to have an official visa or residence to buy or lease housing in Dubai but what I see mostly as financing is the developer offers 1% a month for 100 months. That is about 8 years of financing and pretty aggressive on the payments. But something to consider is the home can be rented out to tourists and can be an income generator.

Here is what I would do – I would wait for someone to screw up and have to flee the UAE and find out if they had one of these homes and take over payments or get a discount, I’m willing to bet it is a lot of distressed properties like that because Dubai is not a place for paycheck-to-paycheck or broke folks trying to wing it.  I saw some nice homes (not flats, homes) for $350k that I would put a down payment on and then finance the rest 1% for 100 months but I want the developer to deal with me on something someone had to flee from and ask to apply their payments to my financing.

Researching the Metaverse

The average person doesn’t realize this but this was a big step for me to understand how to build a virtual city modeled after Dubai's smart/futuristic architecture and how people interact in the city. I drove around Dubai and the gathering spots for people and I learned a lot in terms of the urban layout of a virtual city in a metaverse setting.

Things I considered is landmarks, social gathering spots, public spaces, high-density, and low-density buildings, and shopping options. I needed to see a city like Dubai to get a better feel of how to create a metaverse. The biggest asset of the metaverse is not people or assets – it’s space for advertisement displays and that is what I was researching. These were some good findings I found while going to Dubai to look at this angle.

Dubai Technology and Media Free Zone Authority

The benefit and draw of Dubai are establishing a business in a Dubai free trade zone. There are some awesome benefits that cannot be ignored. There is no tax on income. You get a UAE resident card where you can sponsor your family to move to Dubai. Your resident card allows you to access housing, bank accounts, and purchase a vehicle. You can sponsor employees to move from India, Africa, and the Philippines or Nepal to Dubai.

You cannot move like this in America or hardly anywhere in the world. This is why digital entrepreneurs are flocking to Dubai in droves. Think about the opportunities – first, we can run our API-driven business in Dubai, pure digital play. Someone else can run a photo license like Adobe Stock or Shutterstock based in Dubai that focuses on Global South modeling for downloads around the world. You can create a digital streaming channel for Global South music. These are the type of pure-play digital entrepreneurial ventures.

There is a YouTuber Chidi Ashley who built a home in Bali and has a video of her describing why she moved to Dubai. She appears to be running a digital pure-play enterprise where she runs a scheduling platform and a travel operation. However, I want to say something about Dubai when it comes to entrepreneurs in the next section.

You Will Not Make It in Dubai, You Have to Be Already Made

I have seen some broke brothas making comments under Max Maxwell's video on his trip to Dubai and some of them were typing comments as if they can just move to Dubai and build up. First of all, if you go to a Max Maxwell video and see broke wannabee folks typing in the comment section, that’s all you need to know about Max Maxwell, a charlatan making money of broke bums posing, like Jay Morrison. None of them going to Dubai and making anything happen.

First of all, UAE are oil-rich emirates and if you go to Dubai or look at any videos of Dubai, all of the buildings have emirates-owned properties like EMAAR all over them. Max Maxwell isn’t making any moves in Dubai and the emirates don’t need a fake-named Max Maxwell chicken scratch he made from bum-broke brothas and sistas who gave him money to learn how to flip houses in poor communities. So yall lightweight Max Maxwell followers can shut up with making “real estate moves” in Dubai – they have real money over there, not a bunch of bums in the USA falling for an information-selling hustle by some persona. Anybody talking this go to Dubai and hustle nonsense is very ignorant about UAE and their money and their real estate landscape.

They don’t play games with broke folks in the UAE; that is the first thing everybody better realize if they mention Dubai. You saw or heard about folks abandoning their supercars at the airport to flee the country because debt is illegal in Sharia law and you going to jail until you can repay the money. It’s easy for someone to go to jail for being broke or not making enough money to pay their vendors. If you going to make a move to Dubai, you better have enough money as a security blanket if things go south. You go to Dubai Mall food court right now and see Johnny Rockets all closed down with court order red tape all over the building. They not playing with corporations, so a basic broke punk that follows Max Maxwell has no chance in Dubai.

Women Safety and Dubai

Even though I’m a man I will say this for the sistas – I believe Dubai is a place for sistas to think about outside of the USA. Keep in mind that the USA is still the best place for a Black woman to launch a business due to political and sisterhood connections but when it’s time to go global, I think Dubai should be considered.

They do not play in Dubai with men cat-calling or even speaking to a woman without her speaking first. They provide safety for women in Dubai at a caliber not even implemented anywhere in this world. I see a lot of women walking solo throughout Dubai at all hours of the day, even jogging before sunrise and the consensus I read is women feel safe in Dubai.

I ran into many American sistas there, many of whom were doing professional work. If we look at all of the barriers to sistas from going big, I think Dubai has removed many of those barriers to give sistas a space to thrive. I remember seeing Blavity and Morgan DeBaun having to deal with Israel for content management on Facebook because she was chasing money too thirsty. Morgan DeBaun is a money-chasing piece of work; don’t emulate her. Israel does not have the diversity or the options that the UAE has, especially for Black entrepreneurs. Israel also had a travel ban just like Japan messing up business moves.  Instead, look at the UAE where you can move to your own agency and have better options and freedom as a sista trying to build something up.

Dubai is a Place for Real Ones to Handle their Business

If you already got your money right, and want to be a digital entrepreneur with a global audience then Dubai has one of the best programs to launch a business and get it running. The nice thing is you got proper people like yourself in Dubai, not broke clowns or charlatans even though you got folks trying to run game but you're smart enough to spot game and avoid them. All it takes is a complaint to Dubai authorities and they will crack down hard on anybody running some game and shut it down immediately.

See, someone like me is already in compliance in our business dealings, we got resources and funding and we work well with hiring and working with talent from the Global South so there are a lot of benefits for us to set up shop in Dubai. I don’t have to worry about being a screw-up because we got real-world experience not being some imposter syndrome like you see among these wannabees playing around with Silicon Valley to be validated and accepted.

Like everybody else who is really real in the house, I have to consider Dubai as a place and a space where I can go and genuinely put in real work, be around genuinely good Black people from across the Diaspora, and we work towards creating value and grow a global empire. I’m going to spend time thinking about our options but let me summarize my findings about Dubai.

I think Dubai is a promising place where I can be around the people I truly want to be around. I want to be around Global South talent, good brothas, and sistas from the Diaspora. I want to be in a business environment around other digital entrepreneurs like me and we create an ecosystem of knowledge transfer and innovation.

Dubai gives hope but I have additional things to consider. I love the quality of folks I met in Dubai who don’t drink, give praises due, and love learning on the job and getting better. I love how my colleagues I know in Dubai is handling theirs and they found a space to pursue their dreams and opportunities with the benefit of tax-free and sponsorships to bring in your family to live with you and they can work with you on the business as well.