A cousin of mine, who has a contracting business in Bahrain, called me up yesterday and said he was expanding his business to Dubai. Reasons? He thinks a construction frenzy is about to start and there’ll be a shortage of experienced contractors.
Two other friends of mine, who live in Dubai and have shown no signs of entrepreneurship in their decades-long careers, suddenly want to start restaurants. Dubai is well served with restaurants so why food? They have no answer, except that there’s a boom on the horizon.
Another friend of mine, who owns a real estate business, wants to organise a match-making event, to bring buyers and sellers together. Buyers and sellers of what, I asked? He doesn’t really know, except that lots of buying and selling is about to happen because of the Expo, and he wants a cut on the transactions.
An ex-colleague also wants to do a matchmaking event, but to bring ideas and capital together. Why would capital look for ideas, I asked him? If you have spare cash, isn’t it better to just invest in real estate and sit back? That’s not the point, he explains, it’ll be an annual event and I want to make money off the sponsorship revenue.
Every single person I have spoken to in the last 72 hours is thinking of how to profit from Expo 2020. If even a fraction of this greed and opportunism gets converted into viable businesses, Dubai will benefit for a long time to come.
As to me? Why, today is a holiday, and I am off to meet some friends, to brainstorm on an interesting new business idea!
