'Dream your biggest dream and achieve it in Dubai': Why this Portuguese-Moroccan entrepreneur couple decided to move to Dubai

Dubai: It’s been just a month, but the move to Dubai has been years in the making for Portuguese expat André Rodrigues and his partner, Moroccan expat Hiba Hassani.

The two entrepreneurs decided to move to Dubai last month, after setting up their company – Scaling Studio, in Lisbon. With the work done completely remotely, the two had the opportunity to move anywhere in the world.

This is the story of why they chose Dubai.

Back in Portugal, Rodrigues worked in the field of marketing, but always enjoyed playing around with data. After teaching himself data analytics, he went on to work as a data engineer at one of the leading automobile companies in the world.

Four years in, he began exploring automation and AI, ultimately coming up with an idea for his own startup, with his partner, Hassani.

Hassani, who is an architect, moved to Lisbon from Morocco, to complete her Master’s degree, and two met in 2022 through friends.

“We started as partners in life and then also became partners in business,” Rodrigues said.

“I was always discussing business ideas with her, and she pushed me to start working on them. I tried out a few things, until we eventually did the initial version of Scaling Studio,” he said.

Very soon the two felt confident in the viability of the business, and left their corporate jobs in December 2024 to work on the startup, which offers sales systems and revenue operations for B2B companies looking to scale.

In less than two years, the company has taken on several clients, with a tight team of four full-time employees. But with the work being done remotely, Rodrigues and Hassani quickly began wondering why they couldn’t move out of Lisbon, to a city they both would enjoy living in.

“We started talking about wanting to experience a new country, somewhere neither of us had ever been to. So, we started thinking of countries and cities that we would like to live in, as entrepreneurs and also, personally. I had heard a bit about the UAE and Dubai, but never really looked into it too much, until three years ago when we started having this discussion. Hiba knew of Dubai well, because she had some cousins who have lived here for almost 30 years,” Rodrigues said.

Dubai and the UAE became a place that the two would invariably end up discussing.

“The one thing that we saw was that while 40 years ago, people had ‘The American Dream’, today, we felt that it was more ‘The UAE dream’, ‘The Dubai Dream’. Everyone wants to move here because from the entrepreneurial side, you have an amazing environment that pushes you forward. You see all that people are doing in their careers and it opens up your eyes. Then, on the personal side, too, you see everyone is here, to essentially be the best version of themselves,” Rodrigues said.

Excited by the potential they saw in the city, through their research and after admittedly watching hundreds of videos online, the couple decided to first visit the city in April this year.

“We wanted to take care of the administrative things and also confirm if we liked the place and wanted to live here. And … we just fell in love. It was like we were 99 per cent there before we came, but after we saw the city, it became 120 per cent,” Rodrigues said, laughing.

“You go outside and see how it’s so international and multicultural. The weather is predictable, which is a very big point, because it allows you to have a consistent routine. Everyone is in a good mood, everyone is smiling and that’s contagious,” he added.

Another aspect of life in the city was the cleanliness and safety, and the ride from the airport to their hotel in April simply reconfirmed what the two had been hearing about the country’s safety.

“We were in the taxi, and the alerts went off on the phones. And while initially we were definitely wondering about what’s happening, everyone seemed so calm. We reached the hotel and saw people just going about their day, and that really made us feel that this is something special. The three or four weeks we spent here were better than any video we saw,” he said.

So, when the couple finally landed in Dubai in early October 2026, they knew they were choosing to move to a city where things just happened differently. It’s something Rodrigues says has also influenced their approach to work and life.

“There are a lot of little things that have changed our mindset. For example, whenever we go out, we either see people in workout clothes or going to work and that pushes us to also want to work more. People are way more open to talk about their business and their ideas, and once you get in touch, the speed with which everything moves is so fast. People answer fast and delivery quickly – if they say they’re going to do something, they do it in an hour. And that makes us think about how we can implement that in our business, too,” he said.

And as they continue expanding their startup, the Dubai-it approach, of achieving excellence in record time, is one that the two continue to take inspiration from.

“Our hope is that we achieve the goals that we set for ourselves. We came to Dubai because we wanted to push ourselves to the max. And this is the city, where you dream your biggest dream and achieve it. In Dubai, that seems to be the way to do it, to Dubai-it, and that’s what makes us super excited,” Rodrigues said.