How Qaid Jivan went from Vancouver tech entrepreneur to running the Stonewater Motel

When I get on a Zoom call with Qaid Jivan, he’s in unfamiliar territory. “There’s a Jumanji of creatures living above my bedroom,” he says with a wide smile as he glances up at the ceiling in the Stonewater, a motel on the Sunshine Coast. “That will get fixed eventually. But the house is slanted and drafty as hell. There’s no heating in the bedroom. I learned how to make a fire and now I do that every night. So yeah, it’s a pretty big departure.”

In many ways, Jivan’s career trajectory is hard to fathom, or even to pin down. But then you meet him and, somehow, it feels like a natural path. Jivan grew up in the suburban cement jungle that is Tsawwassen. He went to SFU and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and worked as a project analyst for the Provincial Health Authority and Vancouver Coastal Health.

During that time, he started what is now (to his knowledge) B.C.’s longest-running and largest membership-based music festival camp (Fort Saint McMurphy at Shambhala). Some 120 people come every year to Jivan’s campsite (it’s invite only and sells out every year) and he oversees the operation.

In 2016, he and a couple of SFU classmates started TalentMarketplace, a Vancouver-based recruitment platform that provided a direct connection between clients and candidates.

Jivan served as CEO for five years, in which he oversaw consistent year-over-year revenue growth. The company raised a VC round in early 2021 and had some 10 staff. But by the end of that year, Jivan handed over the reins to his co-founders to pursue real estate, with the goal of moving into hotel development. A couple of years later, the company was no longer operating.

“It’s something I always wanted to do but it’s an unattainable thing for most people in our generation,” Jivan says about his pivot to real estate. He and his partner, Alyssa McDonald, bought a rundown, 100-year-old nine-bedroom home in East Vancouver. They underwent a substantial renovation on a thrifty budget, converting part of it into a two-bedroom, ’70s-themed Airbnb that became a popular destination for people travelling to Vancouver.

“I realized I was pretty good at this stuff and liked doing it,” says Jivan. Around that time, he met John Evans, founder of Vancouver’s famed Opus Hotel Group, at an event in support of Jivan’s festival camp. “I’d just meet him for coffee and pick his brain—he’s a legend,” says Jivan. “I was super honoured that he would want to mentor me and work with me.”

The pair worked on a few projects together while planning for a massive development in Mexico that would have seen Jivan move down south. “I got to learn about everything—how people raise money in the space, the common pitfalls. It was like getting an MBA in the hotel industry,” he says. The Mexico project, however, was postponed during the economic downturn, and Jivan told Evans that he was going to do his own thing.

He started building a database of 20 potential developments that were on the market in B.C., Alberta, Mexico and Bali. It wasn’t long until he circled in on an old motel on the Sunshine Coast just north of Madeira Park called the Stonewater.

“At first, I thought: well, it’s cute, but it’s not near the water,” says Jivan. “But I started to fall in love with it. For one, from a business perspective, it was very strong. Even if we performed the same way the previous owner did, it’s still a good business.” The previous owner, Terry Griffin, had listed the Stonewater on the market multiple times but had never put pen  to paper.

“It was a nine-month negotiation,” says Jivan. “I started working directly with her. We hashed it out one winter evening right here around the table.” Jivan got some financing for the deal. “The investment group was like, ‘This is a no-brainer.’ I’ve had other investors ask me when project two is happening. Which is all really cool—I just have to not screw this up.”

So far, it’s looking good. Other than the main house, where Jivan and McDonald live, the Stonewater and its 11 rooms for guests have been appropriately gussied up. “The idea was just modernizing a place that was well-maintained,” says Jivan. “The previous owner had done a good job, she just hadn’t invested in it since 2008. So it looked like your mom’s living room from 2008. We did it on a gnarly budget—[we] wanted to refresh it with some new colours.” Of course, there were other expenses toward modernizing the place: things like new TVs, internet and fixing an exploded septic tank.

For Jivan himself, living full-time in a cabin and making a fire every night has been an adjustment. “When we were about to move up here, I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be sweet,’” he says. “And Alyssa, who has actually lived in the country before, was like, ‘No, it’s not going to be that nice.’ But when I know something is going to be a bit shitty, that’s fine.”

Quite literally in some cases, like when the pump right beside his bedroom makes the room shake every time someone flushes the toilet. The juxtaposition of all of that happening while Jivan’s Tesla sits outside is borderline comical.

But even as the Stonewater mostly booked out in spring and is on track to sell out its summer reservations, Jivan isn’t close to done with the place. Phase two involves building small cabins and a spa. Jivan estimates that work will be done by summer and that the Stonewater will be able to house 48 people. By the end of the year, he plans to no longer be involved in the Stonewater’s day-to-day operations.

Meanwhile, Jivan has been negotiating on another project—this one 10 acres—that’s only some 10 minutes away from the Stonewater. It’s all part of a larger plan. “There’s this whole area called Kleindale that’s recently been rezoned in the community plan to be commercial,” says Jivan. “The goal is for it to be the new town centre for Pender Harbour and Egmont. Currently, it doesn’t really have one—there are little pockets, but no central town between the three or four major areas [where] people live in the region. I think it would be fun to build all the way down. I don’t see anyone else trying.” And so he’ll take on the challenge, one fire at a time.