94 To p l e f t : C h l ö e E li z a b e t h I m a g e r y
B C B U S I N E S S . C A
J U LY/A U G U S T 2 0 24
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 Stone water,
a motel on the Sunshine Coast. "That
will get fixed eventually. But the house is
slanted and drafty as hell. There's no heat-
ing 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 Tsawwas-
sen. He went to
SFU and graduated with a
bachelor's degree in business administra-
tion 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 McMur-
phy at Shambhala). Some 120 people come
every year to Jivan's campsite (it's invite
only and sells out every year) and he over-
sees the operation.
In 2016, he and a couple of
SFU class-
mates started TalentMarketplace, a Van-
couver-based recruitment platform that
provided a direct connection between cli-
ents 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 part-
ner, 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.
THE ROAD LESS
TRAVELLED
The strange and winding career of
Qaid Jivan has taken him from
founding a tech startup to running a
Sunshine Coast motel
by Nathan Caddell
T R A V E L
