[winter_blue]

The U.A.E. is a country where you have zero, yep zero taxes. Dubai is a pretty great city to live in, and it's not that expensive. You could live well easily on $1000/month. The only downside to U.A.E. is that the tech scene is barely starting up. So you'd have to find talent abroad. On the bright side, it's fairly easy to get visas both to bring people over and to start your own company.

[padraigm]

I'd consider the flagrant human rights abuses in the U.A.E. to be a pretty substantial downside. The U.A.E. routinely imprisons rape victims for extramarital sex, imprisons or castrates people convicted of homosexuality. There is little or no protection for freedom of speech or of the press, etc. The U.A.E. would be a terrible country to live and work in, and a low cost of living does nothing to change that.

[beagle3]

The press has a story every quarter or so about a couple indicted for kissing in public, and stuff like that. Also, Alcohol is reputedly not available, and the internet is filtered.

Is that true? How restrictive is the regime towards migrant entrepreneurs?

[winter_blue]

As a pointer: if you're thinking of doing a startup in Dubai, it's best to open a company in one of the two techno parks there: Dubai Silicon Oasis & Dubai Internet City.

The minimum investment to register a company (FZ LLC) in one of these technoparks is about $12500 (AED 50'000) which you could then pay yourself as salary over the months.

[mbesto]

And a UAE national has to own part of your company in order for you to start one...