Andre Rodrigues and Hiba Hassani spent three years talking about leaving Lisbon. They had built a startup there, they worked fully remotely, and they could live anywhere in the world. In early October, they finally made the move, landing in Dubai with their company, Scaling Studio, and a simple idea about the city: it is where big dreams get built faster.
The couple shared their story one month after arriving, and the move had already changed how they think about work. Dubai, they said, is international, fast and full of people who want to be the best version of themselves. For two founders whose business helps other companies sell better, that pace is a business decision, not just a lifestyle choice.
A data engineer and an architect build a startup
Rodrigues is Portuguese and started his career in marketing, but he always enjoyed playing around with data. He taught himself data analytics and became a data engineer at one of the world’s leading car makers. Four years in, he started exploring automation and artificial intelligence, and the idea for his own startup began to take shape.
Hassani is Moroccan and an architect by training. She moved to Lisbon from Morocco for her Master’s degree, and the two met in 2022 through friends. “We started as partners in life and then also became partners in business,” Rodrigues said. She kept pushing him to work on his business ideas, and after a few experiments, the first version of Scaling Studio took shape.
Quitting their jobs to build a sales machine
Confident in the business, the couple left their corporate jobs in December 2024. Scaling Studio builds sales systems and revenue operations for B2B companies that want to scale. In less than two years, it has taken on several clients with a tight team of four full-time employees.
The work is done entirely remotely, which is what made the move possible. With no office tying them to Lisbon, the couple started asking why they could not live somewhere they would both enjoy more. Dubai kept coming up, partly because Hassani has cousins who have lived there for almost 30 years.
From the American Dream to the Dubai Dream
“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’,” Rodrigues said. “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.”
On the personal side, he said, everyone in Dubai seems to be there to become the best version of themselves. That mix of ambition and optimism convinced the couple to look closer, and after watching hundreds of videos online, they visited the city in April this year.
Three weeks in Dubai settled the decision
The visit was meant to sort out practical details and confirm whether they actually liked living there. “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.
What struck them most was how international and multicultural the city felt, and how predictable the weather is, which makes a steady routine possible. They also noticed the cleanliness and the sense of safety. On the taxi ride from the airport, phone alerts went off, and while they wondered what was happening, everyone around them stayed calm. By the time they reached the hotel, they felt they had seen something special.
One month in, the pace is rubbing off
A month after landing, Rodrigues says the city has changed their mindset in small ways. People seem to be in workout clothes or on their way to work, and that energy pushes the couple to work harder too. People are far more open to talking about their business and their ideas, and once contact is made, things move fast.
People answer fast and deliver quickly, he said. If someone says they will do something, they do it within the hour, and that makes the couple think about how to bring the same speed into their own business.
What the move tells founders weighing Dubai
The couple’s story is not really about a visa or a tax break. It is about a feeling that is hard to put in a pitch deck: the sense that everyone around you is building something, and building it fast. Lisbon gave them a good base and a good life, but not that daily push. Dubai does, and for founders who sell momentum, that push is the product.
There is a warning in the story too. A city that moves fast can also burn people out, and the couple’s first month is still the honeymoon phase. The real test will be whether the pace still feels exciting in a year, when the novelty fades and the work gets hard. For now, they have made their bet with their feet. If Dubai wants to keep winning founders like these, it will need to keep proving the dream is more than a slogan.
