Why I’m leaving Kuwait to Dubai?! And What’s Going to Happen to StartupQ8?

I’m writing this post sitting in the plane to Dubai. Many asked me why I’m leaving Kuwait? And why I had gave up that easily on startupQ8? And whats going to happen to StartupQ8?

Let’s take it a step by step. First of all, my movement from Kuwait to Dubai is a pure business decision. I moved to Dubai because my customers, suppliers and margins are much bigger there than in Kuwait. Simply said, it’s a bigger market and our gate to become international. Kuwait is a great a place to test your idea, but once you reach a Product Market Fit we believe its time to go after the big fish :) That doesn’t apply for all type of startups (for heavy tech startups the location is unrelivant most of the time, for example do you really care that Google is based in the US or Hong Kong!)

Some will say, ok thats all sounds good, but why you gave up on the startup community and startupQ8 that easily? And what’s going to happen in the future? Well I didn’t really give up on trying to help in building a startup community in Kuwait, but its true that I’ll be much less involved. However, I think I prepared StartupQ8 very well for this moment. Since the beginning of StartupQ8 I believed that I couldn’t change things by myself and that I needed help to get things done. From the early days many should interest to help and I was happy to give them for responsibility and take the lead in many tasks and projects. These memebers were also involved in the decision making and I didn’t make major decisions without their blessing. Mijbel AlQattan, Abdulaziz AlLoghany, Mohammed Almeer, Burhan Khalid and Meshary AlOnaizy and many others are all probably working harder than me in StartupQ8 even when I was in Kuwait (from preparing the event to writing blog posts)
The beauty of StartupQ8 that there is no real leader, whoever show commitment and accept to take responsibility for one task or project, he will have the full control to do so and the rest of us will support him and give him feedback if something is not going so well.

Ok, so StartupQ8 will keep running like nothing has changed, but whats my new role in contributing? Good question, my new role will be on writing weekly posts about my experience setting up my business and life in Dubai, and also bridging the experience and network that I got there back to Kuwait. So that’s about everything, stay tune to the first post about moving to Dubai :)