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 1979 Iranian Revolution. Life for Baha’is in the country had been tough even before the uprising, but it became increasingly so after the fact, Zamani tells Entrepreneur.
Image Credit: Courtesy of One Planet Group. Founder, chairman and CEO of One Planet Group Payam Zamani.
When Zamani was 10, a mob incited by school officials chased him off campus and attempted to kill him. He survived, and by age 16, was finally able to flee the country. Zamani recounts the 1987 escape in his book Crossing the Desert: The Power of Embracing Life’s Difficult Journeys, which was published earlier this year. Ultimately, Zamani would make a life for himself in the U.S., but his first stop was Pakistan, where he became a stateless refugee.
“I remember the day that I was admitted to enter the U. S. Embassy in Pakistan because the U.S. knew what [I was] dealing with as a Baha’i from Iran,” Zamani says. “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 did. And that is something that always stuck with me.”
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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 last 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 majored in computer science.
However, by the time he graduated, Zamani had a different professional goal: He wanted to start a business in the environmental space. “I knew very little,” Zamani says. “I was only 23 years old. I had just come to the U.S. I had just learned English. I was speaking the language with a thick accent.”
“I had owned 16 cars already, cheap cars. I would buy and sell them to experience different cars.”
But Zamani would realize another entrepreneurial opportunity. In 1994, his brother landed a job at Microsoft and was on the market for a new Honda. He called Zamani to inform him of a discovery: Honda didn’t 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 car manufacturer didn’t have an online presence.
Still, when his brother suggested they start a website devoted to cars, Zamani was intrigued — because cars were his passion. “I had no money,” Zamani says, “but I had owned 16 cars already, cheap cars. I would buy and sell them to experience different cars. And I loved the idea of arming consumers with more information than the car dealers and salesmen had.”
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Zamani describes a common scenario: You negotiate the price of a car, purchase it, then come home, and a friend or family member who knows cars tells you it was a bad deal. Zamani wanted to take all of the guesswork and regret out of the equation; he wanted people to have the details they needed to navigate the transaction effectively. They would call their business AutoWeb.
“We were the first company ever to provide invoice prices of cars to consumers,” Zamani says. “Dealers did not like it, but our view was, ‘Look, if the consumers show up, the industry will inevitably show up. So, it is our job to make it attractive to consumers, and then the dealers will compete for the consumers’ transactions. And that turned out to be the case.”
“It was against all odds that we were able to build that business and grow it to what it became.”
In the 1990s, Zamani says he and his brother were “the oddballs in Silicon Valley.” They knew nothing about starting a business. They had no network in the U.S., so they had no mentors. They didn’t know the term “venture capital” until a VC reached out to them. Yet no challenge seemed insurmountable after what they’d already overcome, Zamani recalls.
“It was perseverance and being at the right place at the right time and meeting some phenomenal people along the way that ended up helping us,” Zamani explains. “But it was against all odds that we were able to build that business and grow it to what it became.”
Fundraising proved a significant hurdle. In those days, if you weren’t a white man 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 that’s commonplace, of course, for women in Silicon Valley, that they have a very hard time getting funding,” Zamani notes. “And back then, that challenge was extended to even men if they did not fit the mold.”
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The Zamani brothers had to go all the way to Fort Lee, New Jersey to raise money — and “at a much lower valuation than any company in our situation would have raised.” What’s more, it wasn’t until the round before AutoWeb’s IPO that venture capital in Silicon Valley was willing to back it, albeit still at a significantly lower valuation than peer companies would receive, according to Zamani.
AutoWeb went public in 1999 and reached a $1.2 billion valuation, with shares peaking at $50.
“Our pockets are full, but we feel empty. There’s something fundamentally missing.”
Zamani was in New York on the day of the 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’ve got to do something bigger,” Zamani recalls. At just 28 years old, Zamani wasn’t prepared for that level of financial success, he admits.
The company also wanted a new CEO. “Silicon Valley loved hiring gray-haired people for CEO roles, and I did not get that mold either,” Zamani says. “So we hired a CEO who I did not think was the right guy for the job, and he proved that very soon after. So I decided it was time to move on and do something else in my life.”
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Zamani was disappointed with his experience on Wall Street. He says that while founders strive to build companies, VCs and Wall Street want to maximize the share price, even if it means manipulating it before they’re “able to dump it at the right time and move on.”
“That form of capitalism is what has left us all, even the entrepreneurs, founders and executives, feeling that we’re empty at the end of it: Our pockets are full, but we feel empty,” Zamani says. “There’s something fundamentally missing.”
“I wanted to make sure that whatever I build considers the true essence of who we are as humans.”
So Zamani decided to lean into his spiritual upbringing for his future business endeavors. In 2015, he founded One Planet Group, a private equity firm that invests in early-stage companies focusing on the future of mobility, education improvements, health technology and environmental solutions.
Zamani says the group’s name evokes the idea that we’re all citizens of one country: Planet Earth.
“I wanted that concept of unity to be an important part of whatever I was building,” he explains, “and I wanted to make sure that whatever I build considers the true essence of who we are as humans, as the spiritual beings that we are. I don’t want to look at you or anyone else I’m going to work with as a consumer, as a competitor, as an employee, as a token of economic value, but rather something much greater than that.”
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“If you’re making that journey something that’s worth living, you will always feel fulfilled.”
Zamani says he couldn’t understand why nonprofit organizations had to stand for the people and businesses for 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 acquisiton of AutoWeb. The deal, valued at just under $5.5 million, was not only a compelling financial opportunity, but also one with personal significance, Zamani says. “It was a chance to bring closure to a chapter that had remained unwritten for years,” he explains. “Returning to where it all began and guiding it forward was both meaningful and fulfilling.”
According to Zamani, 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.
Related: You Need a Mentor. Here’s Where to Find One for Free.
Then ground yourself in values that fulfill your needs as a human and elevate your business to help other people.
“At the end of the day, that will make your journey far more fulfilling,” Zamani says. “The fact is the overwhelming majority of businesses don’t survive. So you want to make that journey worth experiencing, and not just seeking an exit, seeking an IPO that may never happen. Then you feel like, ‘Ah, that was a failure.’ But if you’re making that journey something that’s worth living, you will always feel fulfilled whether or not that climax comes about in your business.”
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