Payam Zamani

Zamani was born in Tehran, Iran, the youngest of three children of Abdul and Mahboobeh Zamani. As followers of the Baha’i Faith, a peaceful religion focused on bringing about love and unity amongst people of all races and backgrounds, Zamani’s family faced religious persecution in Iran and relocated many times. As a child growing up in the town of Hashtgerd after the Islamic Revolution, Zamani was shunned by his teachers and was subject to ongoing discriminations. After refusing to participate in the daily Muslim mass prayers at the middle school he attended, the school’s religious leader instructed Zamani’s classmates to attack him and another Baha’i student after school and ensure they will never return. He was forced to walk the mile home while being beaten with sticks and stones and spit on by 100 classmates. Zamani was later expelled from school at 11 years-old.

In his own words, he described having an American lawyer assigned to him to fight for his admittance to the United States, “I came to tears. I had just escaped human rights atrocities in my own country and here's a country that doesn't know me, doesn’t owe me anything and they're willing to stand by me and make a case, in order to get me accepted to enter their country and ensure I’m offered a real chance to live a productive life.”

Without his parents to support him, Zamani graduated from Fred C. Beyer High School in Modesto and enrolled at the University of California, Davis. In an interview with KTVU Fox 2 in 2019, he described being so poor while trying to support himself through college that he often only had enough money to buy potatoes for food while attending UC Davis .

The brothers got together and developed Autoweb, an online car buying service. Zamani became the company’s first CEO and his brother CTO.

At 24 years-old, Zamani pitched Autoweb’s business model - signing up car dealers and selling leads on consumers looking for cars - to the Stevens Creek Auto Row Association in San Jose the day Netscape went public in 1995. All of the dealerships signed up .

The brothers suggested the board hire an experienced CEO to run the now large, public company. The board, however, did not choose the brothers’ first choice CEO candidate and the brothers, unsatisfied with the new direction of the company, resigned from Autoweb three months later.

The company is a unique hybrid tech firm combining operating technology and media companies, a socially-responsible early stage investor and a startup business incubator, all designed to build, run and invest in disruptive technology businesses and serve humanity in the process. One Planet’s owned brands include Buyerlink, Contractors.com, California.com and Quite Remarkable.

One Planet’s investment portfolio includes The RealReal, SoulPancake, Volans-i and Ironclad.

Zamani has frequently posted on social media that he is an avid reader. He most often mentions Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game, as inspiration on how he runs One Planet and its brands, guided by an infinite mindset with no definite period of time when you either win or lose. He posted on Instagram on December 31, 2019, “The Infinite Game will inspire you to think much more strategically about your journey and how business and individuals become the best version of themselves when they are inspired by a higher calling - when they embrace service to others as a core focus.”

Zamani has also promoted Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness on his social channels as a help to understanding how institutionalized racism continues to plague the U.S.

In 2018, Zamani and his family traveled to Gambia, West Africa to volunteer at Starfish International, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering Gambian girls by providing them with an advanced education that focuses on service to humanity.

One Planet Ops officially launched April 11, 2015. It became an umbrella company for several brands, including Reply.com, which rebranded to Buyerlink in October 2015.

By the end of November 2014, Reply.com’s board of directors reached out to Zamani and asked him to return as CEO or the board would liquidate the assets. Zamani decided to buy the company instead and rebrand it as One Planet with a strong social impact agenda and focus on universal philanthropy.  

Payam and Gouya Zamani founded BahaiTeachings.org in 2012, which discusses key issues affecting society today and shares the messages of the Baha’i faith. It is a platform for individuals to share their personal perspectives and insights on implementing the Baha’i teachings in their everyday lives. It does not present the official views of the Baha’i Faith and is not the official website of the Baha’i Faith. The official website of the Baha’i Faith is Bahai.org and the official website of the Baha’is of the United States is Bahai.us.

To launch a successful locally targeted platform, simplifying the acquisition of consumer demand for both large and small companies, Zamani realized the key was to get customers to return to the site by combining multiple services under one umbrella . Reply.com added automotive, real estate, and home improvement categories. In 2008, Reply.com transitioned to a lead exchange and auction marketplace for the acquisition of locally targeted and category specific consumer demand, essentially giving businesses access to perfectly targeted consumers. The launch of the patented marketplace propelled Reply.com to significant growth and the company filed for IPO. The company later pulled out of the filing, because of financial conditions and instead made acquisitions.

Zamani married Gouya Movafagh in 2003. He has two daughters. His brother, Frank Zamani, is the president and CEO of Caspio, Inc .

In 2001, the dot com bubble burst and two former rivals, iMotors and CarClub.com, went under. Zamani spent $117,000 to buy their assets and eager to make a return in the automotive industry.

The Zamani brothers received major investments, owned a combined 40 percent of the company and held the positions of Chair and Vice Chairman of the board of directors. Autoweb made its stock market debut on March 23, 1999, initially priced at $14 per share. At the end of the trading day, it rose to $40 per share. The next day Autoweb’s valuation reached $1.2 billion .

In 1999, Zamani raised funds and invested a significant amount of his own money earned from Autoweb’s IPO to launch his second company, PurpleTie, a company he designed to disrupt the dry cleaning industry and change the consumer experience by eliminating the possibility of lost clothes, botched cleaning jobs and any major inconvenience . The concept was for online customers to schedule a pickup and drop off window for their clothes at their home or office seven days a week. Zamani very quickly raised $10 million in seed funding and PurpleTie launched in late 2000. But the 90s tech bubble burst and was quickly followed by the financial meltdown of 2001. VCs looked for faster returns on investments and PurpleTie proved too costly to maintain the massive infrastructure without further investments. It shut down in 2001.

Zamani entered UC Davis as pre med and graduated with a bachelor's degree in environmental toxicology in 1994, but his experience with AAA Student Painters changed Payam’s interest to entrepreneurship.

At this time, his brother Frank Zamani had graduated from Chico State University and was working as a programmer on Microsoft, PowerPoint Division.  In the summer of 1994, Frank attempted to buy a Honda and was surprised to find that Honda didn’t have a website at the time. In the early 1990s, most auto dealers had pretty entrenched traditional sales models and spent substantial marketing dollars on print or broadcast advertising, with little or no targeting. Few auto manufacturers and no dealerships had websites.

Zamani and his brother were granted asylum to the United States and arrived in San Francisco in June 1988 with $75 between the two of them.

In 1987 at the age of 16, Zamani’s parents used their life savings to pay smugglers to help him escape Iran through Pakistan. It was a dangerous journey through deserts and mountains that placed Zamani near starvation and dehydration.

During the 1980s, many Baha’is were arrested and hundreds executed . Young Baha’is were barred from attending university by a government policy that still exists today and were not permitted passports to leave the country.

Payam Zamani (born February 12, 1971) is an Iranian-American tech entrepreneur, angel investor and philanthropist. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of One Planet Ops, a hybrid tech firm that owns and operates a suite of online technology and media businesses, is an early stage investor in cutting edge technologies and businesses, and also serves as a startup business incubator.