Walk into a stylish hotel near to Dubai World Trade Centre and you’ll find a buzz that doesn’t quite fit the typical hotel lobby mould. Alongside tourists snapping selfies and colleagues connecting over coffee inside the 25Hours Hotel at One Central, there’s a flourishing startup scene – and it’s open to founders worldwide.
Co-working desks are occupied by entrepreneurs from across the globe; meeting rooms bring startups face-to-face with investors, corporates and business leaders; and a revolving calendar of workshops, mentorship sessions, courses and events helps founders sharpen their ideas and scale their ambitions. This is Dubai Founders HQ- Dubai’s flagship startup platform: part startup campus, part digital platform, and part integrated ecosystem, bringing together the people, programmes and partners founders need to build and scale companies in Dubai. From access to capital, customers and corporate networks to practical learning, mentorship, founder community and ecosystem intelligence, its ambition is straightforward: to become the first place entrepreneurs go to build and scale a business.
The initiative, launched by Dubai's Crown Prince H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and developed jointly by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism and Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, is designed to solve a problem that every entrepreneur in a new market knows well.
