When Dan Hunter describes moving his business to Dubai, the word he keeps returning to is “smooth.” By his own account the experience “exceeded my expectations,” and coming from someone who had every reason to be cautious, that is high praise.
Dan is a UK entrepreneur who moved his business to Dubai with GenZone. What follows is his story, a candid account of a fresh start, a well-run process, and a move that, in his words, “went like clockwork.”
Everything below comes straight from Dan himself. Our co-founder Kevin McKenzie sat down with him for a full interview about the move, and if you’d rather hear it in his own voice, you can watch the whole conversation right below. Prefer to read? The full story continues underneath.
The False Start That Cost Him $1,300
Long before Dan came across GenZone, he had signed up with another provider, an overseas agency that looked legitimate on the surface. He parted with $1,300 just to begin the process, with the full setup quoted at somewhere around $4,000 to $5,000.
Then nothing happened.
“The entire thing just went nowhere,” Dan recalls. “I framed it on my channel as, ‘I think I got scammed.’ Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, but I just cut my losses.”
Looking back with the knowledge he has now, he realises the plan they had sold him was flawed from the start. They had proposed setting him up in Shams, a Sharjah media free zone, a structure that simply did not fit what his business actually needed.
It is a familiar trap. An agency without genuine local expertise defaults to whatever free zone it happens to know, whether or not it suits the client.
Choosing the right free zone is one of the most consequential early decisions in a Dubai move, and getting it wrong quietly costs founders time, money and momentum. Dan had lost all three before he found us.
Why GenZone Felt Different Before a Penny Changed Hands
What struck Dan first was that the value started before the invoice did.
“Even before a penny had changed hands, you gave me a ton of basically free advice,” he says. “This is what we’re going to do, this is how it’s going to work, this is how it’s going to look, boom, boom, boom.” Instead of a sales pitch, he got a clear map of the entire Dubai company setup process laid out in plain terms.
By the time the two sides got on their initial call, Dan had already made up his mind.
“I just thought, yeah, one hundred percent, this is it.” The pricing sealed it, not because it was the cheapest, but because it made sense. “We talked price, which I actually thought was quite reasonable. There’s that trade-off between cost versus value, and the value is exceptional as well.”
That is the distinction that matters. Dan was not shopping for the lowest number. He was shopping for certainty. GenZone gave him both a fair price and the confidence that the plan behind it was sound.
Paperwork, Handled
For most people, the phrase “UAE government paperwork” is enough to induce a headache. Dan’s experience was the opposite.
“I didn’t really have to do anything,” he says. “You asked me a bunch of questions, I filled out a couple of forms, it took me half an hour, and I sent them back.” Our operations team, led on his file by a dedicated coordinator, took care of everything else.
Even when a genuine hiccup appeared, it barely registered as one. One of the authorities kept rejecting a document because Dan had not signed it correctly.
“That was my fault, nothing to do with you,” he is quick to point out. But the significance is in what happened next: it was quietly fixed. “Imagine doing that on my own, imagine trying to deal with the authorities, not having signed something correctly. It would take forever.”
He put his finger on exactly why.
“Dubai works a lot, especially within government institutions, on who you know and how you can expedite a process. If you’re not plugged into that system, things can just take forever.”
He is right. Because GenZone is directly partnered with the free zone authorities and brings them a steady flow of founders, our team is known by name. When an issue surfaces, we do not sit in a queue.
We escalate to the top, follow up until it is resolved, and hold the authority to a deadline. For the client, a problem that could have meant weeks of silence becomes a phone call and a fix.
From “Maybe in 12 Months” to Done in Under Two Weeks
When Dan first spoke to us, he was not even sure he wanted to move quickly. “Originally I was thinking, well, I might not do this for twelve months.”
Our advice was simple: get the company set up now. There is little downside to having the structure in place and a great deal of upside to being ready when you are. Dan agreed, and from there the pace picked up sharply.
“You guys were great in terms of pressing the accelerator pedal and getting everything done in record time,” he says. After the company was registered, there was a short pause of about a week, and then his residency came together fast. “I don’t think it was even another two weeks before I had my residency. Not even. Everything was set up.”
Business registered, entry permit issued, residency and banking arranged, the kind of timeline that sounds implausible until it is your own. For Dan, the machinery behind it stayed invisible, which is exactly the point.
The Detail That Turned Anxiety Into Ease
Dan is honest about the human side of relocating, and it is the part of his story that lands hardest.
“I’m not a great flyer,” he admits. When he landed in Dubai he had not slept for 24 hours and had not eaten for 24 hours. He was anxious, exhausted and standing in an unfamiliar country. In that state, small frictions become mountains.
So GenZone had removed them in advance. When Dan booked his flights, we sent him a pack of documents, including a map of the airport and a photograph of exactly where to go. “It was like even an idiot like me couldn’t mess it up,” he laughs. “All I had to do was look at the document, oh, boom, that’s where I’m going. It was so simple.”
“You don’t realise the value in things like that until you actually need them,” he reflects. On paper, an airport map is trivial. At 3 a.m. on no sleep in a foreign terminal, it is everything.
A Human Being Waiting at the Medical Centre
The support did not end at arrivals. Every Dubai residency requires a medical exam, and for a jet-lagged newcomer that is one more thing to dread. Dan asked for a morning appointment; it was arranged for the very next day at what he describes as a “beautiful facility.”
And he did not face it alone. “I was met at the medical centre by a human being, somebody who works for GenZone. He dealt with the appointment, all the paperwork, then took me to do my biometrics. I didn’t have to do anything. I just tagged along and he sorted everything out.”
That single touch of a real person, physically there, handling the process while the client simply follows, is what elevated the whole experience for Dan. “Just having that chaperone there, it felt like I’d paid a hundred thousand dollars for the service.”
Beyond Dubai: Building the Bigger Structure
Dan’s ambitions did not stop at a UAE company. He needed his business to work across borders, and that is where our co-founder Kevin McKenzie, the man Dan affectionately calls “Mr Fix It in Dubai,” went further.
Kevin helped Dan set up a tax structure for a US business that integrates legally with his Dubai company.
“There’s a whole bunch of stuff we could talk about,” Dan says. “Anything you need in Dubai, Kevin can sort you out.”
This is the layer most agencies never reach. A Dubai company is powerful on its own, but for globally mobile founders the real advantage comes from designing how it connects to the rest of their operation, tax, accounting and compliance included, so the whole structure holds together cleanly rather than being stitched from mismatched parts.
Why Dan Became an Advocate
By the end of the process, Dan had gained more than a company and a visa. “I wanted to get you on the podcast, meet you and just say thanks,” he told Kevin. “It really went so smoothly that I’m a real advocate for you and what you do.”
Coming from someone who had already lost money to a provider that let him down, that endorsement carries weight. Dan did not become an advocate because the process was cheap or fast in the abstract. He became one because, at every anxious moment where something could have gone wrong, GenZone had already thought of it.
That is what a boutique, end-to-end service is meant to feel like. And for the 1,400+ founders across 50+ countries we have helped, it is what it does feel like.
Thinking About Your Own Move to Dubai?
Dan’s story is not unusual for our clients; it is the standard we hold ourselves to. Whether you are moving to Dubai from the UK or from anywhere else, GenZone handles the company formation, the free zone selection, the residency, the medical, the banking and the on-the-ground welcome, so you can focus on your business instead of the bureaucracy.
And if, like Dan, your business reaches beyond the UAE, we can take you further. Alongside our Dubai service, GenZone also provides premium US LLC formation for globally mobile entrepreneurs, with US banking, Stripe access and non-resident registration, structured to work in harmony with your Dubai company rather than against it.
If you are ready to make your own move, book a free strategy call with our team or start your formation on the GenZone portal. Just like Dan, you can rely on our expertise, our network and our commitment to getting it right the first time.
