In the 1980s, Payam Zamani was growing up in Iran as a member of the Baha'i Faith – a group persecuted by the Iranian government, which killed hundreds of Baha'is in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Life for Baha'is in the country had been difficult even before the uprising, but it became increasingly difficult after the fact, Zamani says. The entrepreneur.
Image Credit: Courtesy of One Planet Group. Founder, Chairman and CEO of One Planet Group Payam Zamani.
When Zamani was 10 years old, a mob instigated 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 recounts in his book the escape of 1987 Crossing the Wilderness: The Power of Embracing Life's Difficult Journeys, which was published earlier this year. Zamani would eventually make a life for himself in the US, but his first stop was Pakistan, where he became a stateless refugee.
“I remember the day I was accepted to enter the US Embassy in Pakistan because the US knew what I was dealing with as a Baha'i from Iran,” says Zamani. “That was the first time in my life, at the age of 16, I experienced human rights. There was a country halfway around the world that valued my life more than my own country. And that's something that has always stayed with me.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of One Planet Group
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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 whatever jobs they could to make ends meet. Zamani finished his senior year of high school and attended UC Davis while his brother enrolled at Chico State. Zamani studied environmental toxicology with the idea of going into medicine; his brother graduated from computer science.
By the time he graduated, however, Zamani had another professional goal: He wanted to start a business in the environmental space. “I knew very little”, says Zamani. “I was only 23 years old. I had just come to the US, I had just learned English. I was speaking the language with a thick accent.”
“I owned 16 cars already, cheap cars. I bought and sold them to experience different cars.”
But Zamani would realize another entrepreneurial opportunity. In 1994, his brother got a job at Microsoft and was in the market for a new Honda. He called Zaman to inform him of a discovery: Honda did not have a website. Zamani didn't know much about the Internet at the time (few people did), so he wasn't necessarily surprised that the automaker didn't have a online presence.
However, when his brother suggested open a website devoted to cars, Zamani was intrigued – because cars were his passion. “I didn't have any money,” says Zamani, “but I already owned 16 cars, cheap cars. I bought and sold them to experience different cars. And I liked the idea of arming consumers with more information than dealers and salespeople. there were cars.”
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Zamani describes a common scenario: You negotiate the price of a car, buy it, then come home and a friend or family member who knows the car 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 necessary details to effectively navigate the transaction. They would call their business AutoWeb.
“We were the first company to offer car invoice pricing to consumers,” says Zamani. “The marketers didn't like it, but our view was, 'Look, if the consumers show up, the industry will inevitably show up. So our job is to make it attractive to consumers and then marketers will compete for consumers. transactions and this turned out to be the case.”
“It was against all odds that we were able to build that business and grow it into what it became.”
In the 1990s, Zamani says he and his brother were “the weirdos in Silicon Valley.” They knew nothing about starting a business. They didn't have The network in the US, so they had no mentors. They didn't know the term “venture capital” until a VC approached them. However, no challenge seemed insurmountable after what they had already overcome, Zamani recalls.
“It was persistence and being in the right place at the right time and meeting some phenomenal people along the way who ended up helping us,” explains Zamani. “But it was against all odds that we were able to build that business and grow it to what was done. .”
Fundraising proved a significant obstacle. In those days, if you weren't a white male from an Ivy League university, you wouldn't get funded, Zamani says. So even though AutoWeb continued to grow and see success, it wasn't attracting investors. “Today we see that it's common, of course, for women in Silicon Valley, that they have a very hard time getting funding,” Zamani notes. “And then, that challenge was extended to men if they didn't fit the mold.”
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The Zamani brothers had to go all the way to Fort Lee, New Jersey collect money — and “at a much lower valuation than any company in our situation would have raised.” Moreover, up until AutoWeb's pre-IPO round, venture capital in Silicon Valley was willing to back it, albeit still at a significantly lower valuation than peer companies would receive, according to Zaman.
AutoWeb went public in 1999 and achieved a valuation of $1.2 billion, with shares peak at $50.
“Our pockets are full, but we feel empty. There is something fundamentally missing.”
Zamani was in New York on the day of IPO. “I'm embarrassed to say this today, but what went through my mind at that moment when the company was going public for $1.2 billion was, Now I have to do something biggerZamani remembers. At just 28, Zamani wasn't prepared for that level of financial success, he admits.
The company also wanted a new CEO. “Silicon Valley I used to like hiring gray-haired people for CEO roles, and I didn't get that mold either,” says Zamani. “So we hired a CEO that I didn't think was the right guy for the job, and he proved this very soon after. So I decided it was time to move on and do something else with my life.”
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Zamani was disappointed with his experience Wall Street. He says that as founders try to build companies, VCs and Wall Street want to maximize the share price, even if that means rigging it before they're “able to get it off the ground at the right time and move on.” “.
“This form of capitalism is what has left us all, even entrepreneurs, founders and executives, feeling empty at the end of it: our pockets are full, but we feel empty,” says Zamani. “There is something fundamentally missing.”
“I wanted to make sure that everything I build takes into account the true essence of who we are as people.”
So Zamani decided to rely on his spiritual education for his future business endeavors. In 2015, he founded Group of a planeta private equity firm that invests in early stage companies focusing on the future of mobility, education improvements, health technology and environmental solutions.
Zamani says that the group's name evokes the idea that we are all citizens 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 built considered the true essence of who we are as human beings, as spiritual beings. that we. I don't want to look at you or anyone else I'm going to work with as a customer, as a competitor, as an employee, as a sign of economic value, but something much bigger than that.”
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“If you're making that journey something worth living, you'll always feel fulfilled.”
Zamani says he couldn't understand why nonprofits had to support people and businesses out of greed, so he's doing what he can to bridge the gap.
In 2022, Zamani and One Planet Group experienced a full-circle moment: the acquisition of AutoWeb. The agreement, estimated with just under $5.5 millionit was not only a compelling financial opportunity, but also of personal importance, says Zamani. “It was a chance to close a chapter that had remained unwritten for years,” he explains. “Going back to where it all started and driving it forward was meaningful and fulfilling.”
According to Zaman, aspiring entrepreneurs who want to make an impact with a business of their own should find a mentor, first and foremost – not a family member, but someone who will tell you the truth.
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Then place it values that meet your needs as a human AND elevate your business to help other people.
“At the end of the day, it will make your trip much more enjoyable,” says Zamani. “The fact is, the vast majority of businesses don't survive. So you want to make that journey worth experiencing, and not just look for an exit, look for an IPO that may never happen. Then you think, “Ah, that was a failure.' But if you're making that journey something worth living, you'll always feel fulfilled whether or not that peak comes in your business.”