How do non-citizen entrepreneurs in Qatar engage with public officials and Qatari business partners to achieve their business aims? What do these everyday business engagements reveal about state-society and state-business relations in Qatar? Via a qualitative, inductive approach and snowball sampling, this paper traces the social and business engagements of entrepreneurs in Qatar’s non-energy sector. The paper argues that entrepreneurs engage with four key stakeholders, 1) citizen bureaucrats, 2) citizen business partners, and 3) customers (citizens and non-citizens), 4) salaried professionals to expand their business operations and gain customers to increase their business revenue. The paper adopts a state-in-society approach to demonstrate how everyday engagements at majlis,’ social settings and office spaces, braid public officials, Qatari citizens, and non-citizen entrepreneurs in each other’s social circles. The paper is driven by two key motivations. One, there is a knowledge gap on the lived realities of entrepreneurs who have no tribal lineage, no prestigious family names, and no access to welfare benefits. Two, there is a theoretical gap in the literatures of migration and state-business relations in the Gulf which do not discuss citizen and non-citizen business partnerships in detail. It is worth examining the everyday social interactions of entrepreneurs with their Qatari partners as the act of owning and operating a business explicitly sets them apart from the migrant working class in Qatar on whom the majority research focuses on. The paper contributes to the literatures of rentierism and state-business relations and has three key findings. One, the non-rentier sectors of the economy are connected to the rentier economy as state agencies, citizen-owned firms, and everyday citizens are customers of these entrepreneurs and inject a portion of rentier income in the non-energy sector. Two, non-citizen entrepreneurs make an 'outsider bargain' with the Qatari state, as they negotiate their way into the ruling bargain between the state and its citizens (made during the time of state formation). These entrepreneurs are temporary insiders of the state as they are outside the welfare state but inside the rentier framework vis-à-vis their business partnerships, customer relations, and social relations with locals and non-locals. Three, though there is a strict citizen-migrant divide in some parts of Qatari society, in the business landscape the state's regulatory environment operates in a way which forces active collaboration between citizens and non-citizen entrepreneurs. This demonstrates that there are variations in migrant experiences and these variations deserve further research and inquiry.