In the Nineteen Eighties, Payam Zamani grew up in Iran as a member of the Bahá’í Faith, a group persecuted by the Iranian government, which killed a whole lot of Baha’is in the wake of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Life for Bahá’ís in the country was difficult even before the rebellion, but it became increasingly difficult after the fact, says Zamani Entrepreneur.
Photo credit: Courtesy of One Planet Group. Founder, President and CEO of One Planet Group Payam Zamani.
When Zamani was 10, a mob incited by school officials chased him off campus and tried to kill him. He survived and, at the age of 16, was finally able to flee the country. Zamani recalls the 1987 escape in his book Crossing the Desert: The Power to Take Life’s Difficult Journeys, which was released earlier this 12 months. Ultimately, Zamani was to make a life for himself in the US, but his first stop was Pakistan, where he became stateless.
“I remember the day I was allowed into the US embassy in Pakistan because the US knew what I was talking about [I was] act like a Baha’i from Iran,” Zamani says. “At the age of 16, I experienced human rights for the first time in my life. On the other side of the world there was a country that valued my life more than my own country. And that is something that has always stuck with me.”
Photo credit: Courtesy of One Planet Group
Zamani stayed in Pakistan for a year before he and his brother Frank Zamani arrived in San Francisco, California in 1988. The brothers had $75 between them and worked as hard as they could to make ends meet. Zamani finished his senior year of high school and attended the University of California, Davis, while his brother enrolled at Chico State. Zamani studied environmental toxicology with the intention of going to medical school; his brother majored in computer science.
But before he graduated, Zamani had another career goal: he wanted to start a business in the green space. “I knew very little,” Zamani says. “I was only 23 years old. I just came to the US, I just learned English. I spoke the language with a strong accent.”
“I already had 16 cars, cheap cars. I bought and sold them to learn about other cars.”
But Zamani saw another entrepreneurial opportunity. In 1994, his brother found a job at Microsoft and was looking for a new Honda. He called Zamani and informed him of his discovery: Honda had no website. Zamani didn’t know much about the Internet at the time (a lot of people did), so he wasn’t necessarily surprised that the automaker didn’t have an online presence.
Still, when his brother suggested starting a car website, Zamani was intrigued – because cars were his passion. “I had no money,” says Zamani, “but I already had 16 cars, cheap cars. I bought and sold them to learn about other cars. “I liked the idea of equipping consumers with more information than automotive dealers and sellers had.”
Zamani describes a typical scenario: You negotiate the price of a car, buy it, then go home, and a friend or family member who knows about cars tells you it was a bad deal. Zamani wanted to take all guesswork and regret out of the equation; he wanted people to have the detailed information they needed to transact successfully. They would call their company AutoWeb.
“We were the first company to make invoiced car pricing available to consumers,” Zamani says. “Dealers didn’t like it, but our view was: ‘Look, if consumers come, inevitably the industry will come. So our job is to make it attractive to consumers, and then dealers will compete for consumers of the transaction. And so it happened.”
“Against all odds, we were able to build this business and grow it into what it has become.”
Zamani says he and his brother were “Silicon Valley weirdos” in the Nineteen Nineties. They had no idea about starting a business. They had no network in the US, so that they had no mentors. They didn’t know the term “venture capital” until a VC investor contacted them. But after all that they had already overcome, no challenge seemed insurmountable, Zamani recalls.
“It was perseverance, being in the right place at the right time and meeting phenomenal people along the way that helped us,” Zamani explains. “But against all odds, we were able to build this business and grow it into what it has become.”
Fundraising proved to be a major obstacle. Back then, if you were not a white male from an Ivy League university, you would not get funding, Zamani says. So, although AutoWeb continued to grow and turn out to be successful, it failed to attract investors. “What we see today is that for women in Silicon Valley, of course, it’s common and it’s very difficult for them to get funding,” notes Zamani. “And then that challenge even extended to men if they didn’t fit the mold.”
The Zamani brothers had to travel all the way to Fort Lee, New Jersey, to raise the money – “at a much lower valuation than any company would raise in our situation.” Moreover, it wasn’t until AutoWeb’s pre-IPO round that Silicon Valley enterprise capital was willing to back it, albeit still at a much lower valuation than comparable firms would receive, according to Zamani.
AutoWeb went public in 1999 and achieved a valuation of $1.2 billion the stock peaked at $50.
“Our pockets are full, but we feel empty. Something is fundamentally missing.”
On the day of the IPO, Zamani was in New York. “I’m embarrassed to say this today, but when the company went public for $1.2 billion, I believed: Now I have to do something greater– recalls Zamani. He admits that, at just 28 years old, Zamani was not prepared for this level of monetary success.
The company also wanted a latest CEO. “Silicon Valley loved hiring gray-haired people as CEOs, and I didn’t like it either,” Zamani says. “So we hired a CEO who I didn’t think was the right person for the job, and he proved it shortly thereafter. So I decided it was time to move on and do something else with my life.”
Zamani was disillusioned with his experiences on Wall Street. He says that while founders try to build firms, VCs and Wall Street want to maximize the stock price, even if meaning manipulating it before “they can dump it at the right time and move on.”
“It is this form of capitalism that has made all of us, even entrepreneurs, founders and executives, feel that at the end of capitalism we are empty: our pockets are full, but we feel empty,” Zamani says. “Something is fundamentally missing.”
“I wanted to make sure that everything I built embraced the true essence of who we are as people.”
Therefore, Zamani decided to rely on his spiritual upbringing in his future business ventures. In 2015 he founded One Planet Groupa private equity company investing in early-stage firms focused on the way forward for mobility, improving education, health technology and environmental solutions.
Zamani says the group’s name evokes the concept that we are all residents of one country: planet Earth.
“I wanted the concept of unity to be an important part of everything I was building,” he explains, “and I wanted to make sure that everything I was building took into account the true essence of who we are as humans, as spiritual beings that we create. I don’t want to look at you nor on anyone else with whom I will engage, such as a consumer, competitor, employee or evidence of economic value, but rather something much greater.”
“If you make this journey a worthwhile experience, you will always feel fulfilled.”
Zamani says he cannot understand why nonprofits have to defend people and firms have to defend greed, so he does what he can to fill the gap.
In 2022, Zamani and One Planet Group came full circle: the acquisition of AutoWeb. Transaction worth approx slightly below $5.5 millionwas not only an attractive financial opportunity, but also personally meaningful, Zamani says. “It was a chance to close a chapter that had remained unwritten for years,” he explains. “Returning to where it all began and carrying it forward has been both meaningful and rewarding.”
According to Zamani, aspiring entrepreneurs who want to make an impact with their very own business should first find a mentor – not a member of the family, but someone who will let you know the truth.
Then base yourself on the values that meet your needs as a human being AND elevate what you are promoting to help other people.
“Ultimately, it will make your trip much more rewarding,” Zamani says. “The fact is that the vast majority of companies will not survive. So you want to make this journey worth living, not just looking for a way out, looking for an IPO that may never happen. Then you think, “Oh, that was a great opportunity.” malfunction.’ But if you make this journey something worth living, you will always feel fulfilled, whether your business reaches this high point or not.”