When I first started looking into starting a business in Dubai, I expected it to feel like navigating a maze of government offices and confusing paperwork. What actually surprised me was how much of the process has changed in the last few years — and how many of the "rules" people still repeat online are honestly outdated.
A friend of mine who set up his company here a few years back kept warning me about needing a local partner who'd own 51% of everything. That used to be true for a lot of mainland businesses, but reforms over the past several years opened up full foreign ownership for most business activities. It's one of those things where the old advice sticks around in forums and Facebook groups long after it stopped being accurate.
The other thing nobody really prepares you for is how much the right choice depends on stuff that has nothing to do with the paperwork itself. I spent way more time thinking about where my actual customers would be than I did comparing office packages. If most of your clients are outside the country, a free zone setup makes a lot of sense. If you're planning to sell directly to people walking into a shop in Dubai, that changes the calculation completely.
I also didn't realize how much license types vary depending on what you're actually doing. A friend running a small marketing consultancy had a completely different (and much simpler) experience than someone I know who imports furniture and has to deal with customs classifications and warehouse requirements.
Banking was honestly the part that took longest, not the license itself. I'd budgeted a week or two mentally and it ended up being closer to a month between document collection and the bank's internal approval process. If you're planning your own timeline, I'd build in more buffer for that step than you'd expect.