In 2022, Kevin McKenzie left Canada. Not because things weren’t working — but because, by his own reckoning, they were working a little too well for the government and not quite well enough for him. A Finance graduate from the University of Ottawa who had built a career across wealth management and the Canada Revenue Agency, Kevin understood taxation better than most. And what he understood, clearly, was that nearly half of what he earned was leaving his hands before he could do anything with it.
Dubai had been on his radar. Not as a fantasy, but as a calculation. Zero corporate tax. Full foreign ownership. A business environment built, deliberately, to attract exactly the kind of internationally mobile founder Kevin was becoming. So he made the move — and promptly ran into every obstacle the industry had managed to construct in the meantime: opaque pricing, slow timelines, agencies that vanished the moment a trade license was issued, and a general air of confusion that seemed designed to make the process feel harder than it needed to be.
Around the same time, Shayan Nasiri — also based in Canada, also a University of Ottawa graduate, with a background spanning business analysis, underwriting, and real estate management at firms including Zurich Insurance and IG Wealth Management — was asking a version of the same question. Why were successful entrepreneurs still handing over a disproportionate share of their income to high-tax home countries when better-structured alternatives clearly existed? The answer, he figured, was that the path to those alternatives was still too opaque, too fragmented, and too dependent on finding the right person to guide you through it.
Two Canadians. Two careers built around finance and business. One shared frustration with an industry that was failing the very founders it was supposed to serve.
That was the starting point for GenZone.
From Marketing Consultancy to Something More
GenZone didn’t begin as a business setup firm. In its earliest form, the company operated as a marketing consultancy — working primarily with entrepreneurs in the crypto, technology, and online business space. It was through those client relationships that the real demand began to surface.
Again and again, the same conversations kept happening. Clients weren’t just asking about marketing. They were asking about taxation. About regulatory burden. About whether there was a cleaner, more efficient jurisdiction to operate from. Kevin and Shayan had personally made the move to Dubai and gone through the entire process — company formation, banking, residency — so when clients started asking for guidance, the founders were in a position to give it.
What began as informal conversations between the founders and their network gradually took on a life of its own. The pivot wasn’t a strategic decision made in a boardroom. It was demand-driven, built on real-world experience, and grounded in exactly the kind of firsthand knowledge that the existing industry was conspicuously lacking.
Building Trust in a Crowded, Low-Trust Industry
The business setup space in Dubai is not short on providers. What it has historically been short on is accountability. Agencies with little skin in the game, unclear pricing, and a tendency to disappear post-setup had left the market with a credibility problem that GenZone had to navigate from day one.
The founders’ advantage was also their origin story. They hadn’t entered this industry from the outside with a theoretical model. They had been the client — confused, underserved, and looking for a partner that would actually take ownership of the process from start to finish. That lived context shaped every decision they made about how GenZone would operate.
Early clients came largely through the founders’ own networks — friends, family, and professional contacts from Canada and other Western countries who trusted Kevin and Shayan precisely because they had watched them go through the same process. Referrals became the primary growth engine. Reputation did the rest.
What GenZone Does Today
Since its founding in February 2021, GenZone has helped over 1,100 entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries establish companies in Dubai and the United States. The firm is a Platinum Partner of the Dubai Free Zone Authority and has opened upwards of 2,500 corporate bank accounts for its clients.
Services span the full business lifecycle: Dubai Free Zone and Mainland company formation, US LLC registration in Wyoming and Delaware, UAE residency visas, corporate banking, VAT and corporate tax compliance, bookkeeping, and real estate advisory. The model is end-to-end by design — no handoffs to third parties, no disappearing after the trade license prints.
Kevin leads growth, strategic partnerships, and long-term vision. Shayan oversees operations, marketing, and client experience. Major decisions are made jointly. The co-CEO structure, they say, works because the skill sets are complementary and the mission is shared.
The team today numbers over 20 specialists operating across offices in Dubai and Miami, working in eight languages and serving clients across more than 50 countries.
Founders Who Made the Move — Clients Who Followed
The clearest illustration of what GenZone does is in the clients it has served. Dan Hunter, an entrepreneur and educator based in Australia, relocated to Dubai with GenZone’s support and used the transition to expand his international business operations. A Canadian business owner — whose own story mirrors the founders’ closely — partnered with GenZone to relocate, restructure his international entity, and position the business for long-term global growth. Cryptic Web3, a blockchain-focused company, worked with GenZone to establish a Dubai presence at a time when the UAE was emerging as one of the world’s most active markets for digital assets.
Across these cases, the common thread isn’t geography or sector. It’s the same realisation Kevin and Shayan had themselves: that the structure a business operates under shapes everything about what that business can become.
Growth Plans
GenZone’s growth plans are focused on deepening its presence in the Dubai business setup and the US LLC formation space while expanding the technology layer that underpins its service delivery. A key part of this is GenZone LaunchPad, a first-of-its-kind client platform that makes setting up Dubai businesses and US LLCs seamless for globally mobile entrepreneurs.
The firm is investing further in automation and strategic partnerships, with a longer-term ambition to become the go-to platform for entrepreneurs building globally competitive businesses across multiple jurisdictions.
For Kevin and Shayan, the trajectory is a direct extension of where they started. Two people who left a high-tax system, built a business in a better one, and realised along the way that the most valuable thing they could offer wasn’t just the paperwork — it was the clarity.
That, more than anything, is what GenZone is selling. And given that over 1,100 founders across 50 countries have bought in, it appears the market was waiting for exactly this.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the founders of GenZone?
Kevin McKenzie and Shayan Nasiri — both University of Ottawa alumni with roots in finance, business analysis, and wealth management. They launched GenZone in February 2021, not as outside observers spotting a market gap, but as people who’d personally gone through Dubai’s business setup process and found it badly wanting.
What does GenZone actually help with?
Quite a lot, as it turns out. The core offering covers Dubai Free Zone and Mainland company formation, US LLC registration, UAE residency visas, and corporate bank account opening. But it doesn’t stop at setup — the firm also handles VAT and corporate tax filings, bookkeeping, annual compliance, and real estate advisory in Dubai. The idea is that you shouldn’t need five different vendors for what is, at its core, one journey.
How many entrepreneurs has GenZone worked with?
North of 1,100 across more than 50 countries, with over 2,500 corporate bank accounts opened along the way. The firm also holds Platinum Partner status with the Dubai Free Zone Authority — a recognition that reflects both volume and quality of setups rather than just client numbers.
Has GenZone raised any funding?
No — it’s entirely bootstrapped, and intentionally so. Growth came through referrals and word of mouth, which the founders credit to a simple fact: their earliest clients were people who personally knew Kevin and Shayan, trusted that they’d been through the process themselves, and didn’t need much convincing beyond that.
Where does GenZone operate from?
Dubai is the home base, with a second office in Miami. The Miami presence isn’t cosmetic — it puts the team in the same time zone as North American clients and keeps them close to the US LLC side of the business, which has grown into a significant part of what GenZone does.
