He Arrived in the U.S. With $75 and Started a $1.2B Business

In the Nineteen Eighties, Payam Zamani was rising up in Iran as a member of the Baha’i Religion — a group persecuted by the Iranian authorities, which killed hundreds of Baha’is in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Life for Baha’is in the nation had been robust even earlier than the rebellion, however it grew to become more and more so after the reality, Zamani tells Entrepreneur.

^{Picture Credit score: Courtesy of One Planet Group. Founder, chairman and CEO of One Planet Group Payam Zamani.}

When Zamani was 10, a mob incited by faculty officers chased him off campus and tried to kill him. He survived, and by age 16, was lastly capable of flee the nation. Zamani recounts the 1987 escape in his e-book Crossing the Desert: The Power of Embracing Life’s Difficult Journeys, which was revealed earlier this 12 months. In the end, Zamani would make a life for himself in the U.S., however his first cease was Pakistan, the place he grew to become 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.”

^{Picture Credit score: Courtesy of One Planet Group}

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Zamani stayed in Pakistan for a 12 months earlier than he and his brother Frank Zamani arrived in San Francisco, California in 1988. The brothers had $75 between them and labored no matter jobs they might to make ends meet. Zamani completed his final 12 months of highschool and attended UC Davis whereas his brother enrolled at Chico State. Zamani studied environmental toxicology with the thought of going into medication; his brother majored in laptop science.

Nonetheless, by the time he graduated, Zamani had a totally different skilled aim: He wished to start out a enterprise in the environmental area. “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.”

However Zamani would understand one other entrepreneurial alternative. In 1994, his brother landed a job at Microsoft and was on the marketplace for a new Honda. He known as Zamani to tell him of a discovery: Honda did not have a web site. Zamani did not know a lot about the web at the time (few individuals did), so he wasn’t essentially shocked that the automobile producer did not have an internet presence.

Nonetheless, when his brother prompt they begin a web site dedicated to automobiles, Zamani was intrigued — as a result of automobiles have been his ardour. “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 frequent situation: You negotiate the worth of a automobile, buy it, then come dwelling, and a pal or member of the family who is aware of automobiles tells you it was a dangerous deal. Zamani wished to take all of the guesswork and remorse out of the equation; he wished individuals to have the particulars they wanted to navigate the transaction successfully. They might name their enterprise 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 Nineteen Nineties, Zamani says he and his brother have been “the oddballs in Silicon Valley.” They knew nothing about beginning a enterprise. They’d no community in the U.S., so that they had no mentors. They did not know the time period “venture capital” till a VC reached out to them. But no problem appeared insurmountable after what they’d already overcome, Zamani remembers.

“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 vital hurdle. In these days, should you weren’t a white man from an Ivy League college, you would not get funded, Zamani says. So, though AutoWeb continued to develop and see success, it wasn’t attracting traders. “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 needed to go all the technique to Fort Lee, New Jersey to lift cash — and “at a much lower valuation than any company in our situation would have raised.” What’s extra, it wasn’t till the spherical earlier than AutoWeb’s IPO that enterprise capital in Silicon Valley was prepared to again it, albeit nonetheless at a considerably decrease valuation than peer firms would obtain, in accordance with 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 remembers. At simply 28 years outdated, Zamani wasn’t ready for that degree of economic success, he admits.

The corporate additionally wished 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 disillusioned along with his expertise on Wall Avenue. He says that whereas founders try to construct firms, VCs and Wall Avenue need to maximize the share worth, even when it means manipulating it earlier than 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 determined to lean into his non secular upbringing for his future enterprise endeavors. In 2015, he based One Planet Group, a personal fairness agency that invests in early-stage firms specializing in the way forward for mobility, training enhancements, well being expertise and environmental options.

Zamani says the group’s identify evokes the concept that we’re all residents of 1 nation: 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 could not perceive why nonprofit organizations needed to stand for the individuals and companies for greed, so he is doing what he can to bridge the hole.

In 2022, Zamani and One Planet Group skilled a full circle second: the acquisiton of AutoWeb. The deal, valued at just under $5.5 million, was not solely a compelling monetary alternative, but additionally one with private 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.”

In response to Zamani, aspiring entrepreneurs who need to make an impression with a enterprise of their very own ought to discover a mentor, first and foremost — not a member of the family, however somebody who will inform you the fact.

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Then floor your self in values that fulfill your wants as a human and elevate your corporation to assist different individuals.

“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.”