Payam Zamani 8:39
Yeah. So after Iran’s revolution, and for those who don’t know, in 1979, until then, we had a king in Iran, and the 1979 to clerics, the Muslim clerics. Fundamentalist they took over. And they made life very difficult for minorities, particularly Bahais. And every school in Iran had this teacher, that his job was to make sure that every student would turn out to be a good Muslim, whether they’re Muslim or not. And this teacher would walk around with a gun, that was his way of ensuring that people who are not very good Muslims, and he would invite me and this other Bahai to join them for mass prayers every day on campus.
And we politely say that what we’re Bahai we have our own prayers. And frankly, he was pretty cordial. And he will say, okay, I get it. That’s fine. One day during the sermon, which we could hear from the classroom that we were waiting in, that he said, today we’re going to get rid of this unclean infidels. You got to keep in mind based on the Islamic beliefs the way the fundamentalist believe there are a few things that are unclean, whether you wash them or whatever you do with them. It is infidels Bahai being the prime ones, dogs, pig and ejaculate, those four things are unclean and you cannot touch.
And so he said today we’ve got to get rid of the infidels, the two Bahai boys, the school and that there’s a mob outside waiting for us, of course no teachers willing to give us a right because they will be putting their own lives at risk. And after about 10 minutes, the two of us looked at each other, we thought, well, either they’re gonna come to us, or we’re gonna go to them. And these are kids standing there with rocks and sticks and whatever.
So we went forward, and I call this the bleeding mile, those a mile of walk, they started beating us throwing rocks at us, stoning us, and, frankly, and spitting on us. Frankly, I did not think I’m gonna survive that. There was a time that I was almost in a different kind of zone. I could not feel the pain any longer. But I was just looking at across the street. I was not showing emotions, I was not angry, I was not crying. Like just thinking that their parents across the street walking, they cannot care less about that this mob is killing two Bahai boys.
What has happened to these people? How do they become like this. And I was feeling sorry for them that this is what has happened to them. I survived the ordeal when I got home. I was drenched to toe you could wring out my clothes and spit would come out of them. And but that was it. I cannot live with my parents anymore. At night I was sent out of town and I’ve never went back. And there’s of course a lot more associated with that story. And what happened next how my parents tried to go to the school district and so on, and how they were threatened to death.
That is life living on their fundamentalist regime. So anyhow, I tell people like these days, we are seeing what’s happening on campuses in the US and I feel deeply for the innocents that are getting affected. But I tell people peel the onion, peel the onion, because there’s a lot more there. You got to wonder, did Hamas care about their own people and about the people of Israel? Who is funding them? Iran is. Iran is a country made up Shiites 9% of Iranians are so needs you cannot find a Sunni mosque in Iran. They demolish them all. Since when Iran cares about so many that they care about Palestinians.
This is a political thing that Iran is definitely behind. And I feel sad that the Palestinians have become the pond in the middle. But the Iranians have done a lot of bad things in the world. The Iranian government has Islamic Republic of Iranians.
Jeremy Weisz 13:02
How did your family become that religion? Because it’s not as common there right? How did they become Bahai?
Payam Zamani 13:14
So my mom was born in a Bahai family, at least when she was born, her parents were Bahai, even though her mom had become a Bahai after she had married my grandfather, and my grandfather. They go back. They were one of the early Bahai and Bahai is only about 150 years old. So there are many early Bah├í’├¡s that we’ve all been in touch with. And my dad though he was born in a Islamic fundamentalist family. And to the point that Bahais were very much about modern education, educating everybody, the girls in particular.
So their reputation in Iran was something that was very known. So my grandfather, from my dad’s side, my dad’s father would not let my dad to go to school, he will say if you go to school, you’ll become a Bahai. All you need to know is how to read Quran. That’s all you need. And my dad when he was 11 years old, he actually escaped home because I talked about this in my book, my grandfather was a violent man who killed one of his sons. And so my dad escaped home and ultimately ended up in a juvenile house, but at the age of 20, he became familiar with the Bahai faith as a result of a Muslim cleric saying bad things about Bahai and he felt that you know what, I want to get to know these people.
And then as a result of that, he got to know it and decided that you know what, this makes a lot of sense. It basically says that, religion is a progressive revelation and it’s not or the fact that we are all part of one human family that woman and men are equal that science and religion should agree if they don’t, it’s religion that’s at fault, because it’s dogmas and superstition is like this is all making sense. So he decided to become a Bahai. So then he met my mom after he had become a Bahai. So I was born to Bahai family as a result.
Jeremy Weisz 15:22
It’s a crazy journey, I would love for you to just to kind of fast forward a little bit through, take us a little bit through that journey. Once you get in the car, you said your 24 hours with your mom, they drop you off, someone random person picks you up. What does the journey look like to get to the US at this point?
Payam Zamani 15:52
The smuggling part took about a week for me to make it to the first town in Pakistan. And keep in mind, I mean, that whole area of the world is an area you want to stay away from. This is where Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan meet, it is one of the most lawless places on the planet, some of the worst things on the planet happened. The smugglers take drugs to Iran as the route to wherever they want to take it. And they usually go back empty-handed unless they have people to take with them. It is a rough, rough place to be.
So I just remember when I was going through that the whole time, I was thinking roadkill that. If I die here, nobody will know, nobody will know what happened. Because keep in mind, when you’re being smuggled, the Border Patrol will not stop you. They will simply use rocket-propelled grenade and they hit the convoy they hit the people, they will be afraid for their own lives, so they’re not going to stop you. And if they were to arrest you, the sentence they would get back in Iran would be death. So either way, it would have been a pretty miserable outcome.
So after a week, which the experience was kind of like the setting, think of the movie Lawrence of Arabia, that’s a setting. That’s what the landscape looks like. I make it to that border town. And I went to the United Nations outpost. Now luckily, as Bahai, we have Bahai all over the planet. So when I got to that town, from the place that they dropped us off, we were able to contact the Bahai of that town, who came to us in that motel, and they took us to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, that they had an outpost in that town, they got us temporary asylum papers, then they gave us Pakistani clothing. So we blend in, and they sent us a Lahore, which is on the other side of Pakistan. My brother and sister had left a year prior to me and they were in that town.
So I was able to reunite with them. But then ultimately, I made my way to the US Embassy in Islam, about the capital of Pakistan. And not today, because I’ve been talking about this quite a bit. But I usually get emotional talking about this, that I went to the US Embassy in Pakistan. And that is the first time in my life that I experienced human rights. I love this country. And one of the reasons is that it gives hope to the planet. Most Americans don’t realize that, if you’re a teenager living a miserable life in miserable conditions, halfway around the world, you don’t hope that Russia is gonna save or China’s gonna save you, you hope that the US will save you. That’s a spiritual destiny that this country has. That is a privilege that we have, and we don’t realize that.
So I went to the US embassy and the US being the amazing country that it is it hired a lawyer to fight on my behalf, to give me admittance to the US basically prove my case. And Ronald Reagan was very much aware of what was going on to the Bahai in Iran at that time. And as long as you could prove that you are Bahai, you would get accepted to come to this country, as you would get accepted to go to Australia to Germany to many other countries. And so I was able to gain admittance and a Catholic charity from New York, bought my ticket. And I came to the US and landed here on June 28 1988 with my brother in San Francisco. And I talked about this 75 bucks that pocket between the two of us.
Jeremy Weisz 19:50
I know you have I think you have a film company. Forget about the other stuff you’re making. Are you going to come I’m out with the Crossing The Desert film.
Payam Zamani 20:04
I’m not going to make a movie about myself.
Jeremy Weisz 20:06
Someone else will do it.
Payam Zamani 20:08
If somebody wants to do it, maybe Steve Sarowitz. Steve, he owns Wayfarer.
Jeremy Weisz 20:12
Exactly. Steve, if you’re listening, I have your next movie. It’s called Crossing The Desert, there’s a book, you should buy it and make a movie out of it. Your entrepreneurial journey. Talk about monopoly, that kind of stuff. I think it started your entrepreneurial journey.
Payam Zamani 20:33
Yeah. So must have been in 1978, my mom’s sister was dying from cancer in Tehran, and we lived in another town in northern part of Iran. And I was sad that my mom was leaving. And she said that, okay, fine. I’ll get you something when I come back in a few days, what do you want? I said, I want a monopoly set. She had no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t even know I heard about monopoly. She remember, she brought me back a Monopoly. And it was the real one. But it was an Iranian version, and it had the streets of Tehran. And so it was a great set.
And I remember that I would just take care of it as good as I could to make sure that it will last. But from early on, I had this love about entrepreneurship. And I started bunch of small businesses, all kinds of stuff from selling stuff on the side of the road to even selling software back when you could copy software on cassette tapes. And in Iran, copyright laws are not really followed much. So I was making money from doing that. But then when we came to the US, my brother and I, and that love that we had for entrepreneurship, continue then I just feel like, life moments happen to all of us. Sometimes we take advantage of them, sometimes we don’t.
But it was a life moment that in 1994, my brother and I, we decided to start an online carbine service, which it was something that we did out of passion. And I always tell people, the companies that got started in the early 90s, on the web, they all came out of passion, no one thought they’re going to become millionaires as a result of studying those. And I loved cars. I was 24 years old, a 23 years old. And I had started, I had owned 16 different cars up to that point, cheap cars, Pinto, and then old Datsun’s and old Camaros and so on. But I felt like it could be really helpful to arm the consumer with a lot of information about cars. And help them make a wiser decision. And the internet gave us the platform.
Jeremy Weisz 23:02
I mean, you have $75 When you get here. How did you make ends meet? I mean, we’ll get to the Ottawa, which is amazing story. But like, I guess, at least for me, I’ll speak for myself. Like we take things for granted. Right? And so, I want just to put myself in someone who’s 16. They’ve already taken this crazy journey to the US save $75. There is no like place to live in, food, you’re not going to a school, you’re not going to work. How did you make ends meet in the beginning to just survive, I guess?
Payam Zamani 23:37
Yeah. I had a cousin who lived in California, and he was the one who showed up at the airport to pick us up. The cousin was four and a half years older than me. And he picked us up and he lived in Modesto, California. For those of you don’t know, Modesto doesn’t exactly remind you of what the US looks like in the movies. It’s nothing like New York or San Francisco or LA. It’s in the middle of a foreign country, Central Valley. And so anyway, it took us from Modesto, and we lived with them for 20 days.
And after 20 days within the 20 days. I mean, the first night I slept for 16 hours, jetlag and all that. But then the next day, it took us out looking for jobs. And I got a job at a silkscreen printing shop in the evening and during the day working at a pizza place when he was a manager at, my brother got a job. 20 days later, we put down a $300 security deposit and $350 a month rent. My brother and I got a one bedroom apartment. And we spent about $80 buying furniture from garage sales. And that was it. We started working and I went to high school but I would work
Every night on the weekends said, I work 40 hours a week, even when I went to high school, and we had to make ends meet. There was no other way around that. And we love that. We love that. Because even though we were busy, very busy going to school and working, we felt free. We felt that, we had the opportunity to live a free life without being afraid. I mean, it’s hard to fathom the idea of living a Bahai life in Iran. Even if you’re not a Bahai you’ve seen the woman life freedom movement, that how everybody is constantly living in danger. Now multiply that by 10. That’s a Bahai in Iran. And so not having to deal with that was phenomenal.
Jeremy Weisz 25:49
It’s wild. Talk about the beginnings of AutoWeb. Initial idea.
Payam Zamani 25:56
Yeah, so my brother is six years older than me, but we both went to college at the same time. So we graduated the same year 1994. And out of college, he got a job at Microsoft. So one day he called me up, he said, look, I’m looking to buy a Honda. Honda does not have a website. What do you think about starting a website for cars? And my first question was, I don’t know what the internet looks like. And he said, look, I’ll come over, he came over, you set me up on CompuServe. Of course, 90% people are watching this have no idea what I’m talking about.
Jeremy Weisz 26:35
I had CompuServe account. I had a computer. Yeah. So cs.com.
Payam Zamani 26:40
Yeah, so that was how, there was AOL, CompuServe prodigy, and those would give you access to the internet. And I think there were only about 5000 websites registered at the time. And so I saw the entire experience, and I loved it. And I thought that would be a great idea. So then he became the technology guy, and I became the sales and marketing guy. And we hit the road, and I was just on the road trying to sell. And I remember, there was a time I had 150 business cards that I had accumulated from every presentation I had done to every car dealer in the US. And they had all said, no. And my brother was asking me that, should we stop? I’m like, no.
Jeremy Weisz 27:23
What was your pitch like? What would you go in and tell them?
Payam Zamani 27:26
I would say that, would you like to join AutoWeb, the nation’s electronic AutoMall? And they’re like, well, what is it? What does it look like? And I would take out my computer, and I will show them. And I will tell them that basically, the internet being this new thing, when people go online to buy cars, well, where do they go is the web, they go to AutoWeb. So let me show you what it looks like. And people love that they will basically give them a microsite within AutoWeb. And that was it and they will pay us a flat monthly fee or annual fee and they will become part of the program.
And we of course evolved that model dramatically over the years to come. But that was the beginning of it. And the first 150 said no, but those were the days that they will listen to Wayne Dyer, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins every single day and pump myself up. I will listen to Guns and Roses before going to the first meeting to get energetic and I will show up you know just on fire wanting to sell and they will say no. But then, you know, finally once the first deal got done, then the floodgates open. So you fast forward to four years later, we have 5000 member dealers.
Jeremy Weisz 28:40
I used to listen to those same tape cassettes. Yeah, does exhibit area all those. So there’s a first milestone of getting the first dealer to say yes, and then it just created more dealers to say yes, obviously. What was another major milestone I do want to talk about not only were you going to dealerships but you started going to the car insurance companies too and I don’t know if at what point the conversation with State Farm comes into play. But when you’re going basically dealer to dealer what was a major milestone for you in the progress?
Payam Zamani 29:23
I mean, a few major milestones one was raising money. We had no idea how to raise money in the US. I mean, we raised $150,000 initially at a super-low valuation. But you got to keep in mind my brother and I did not fit the mold. We have thick accent. We had just come to the US. We did not go to an Ivy League. My brother went to Chico State. I went to UC Davis and we were not white and Silicon Valley at least those I mean today only 2% of the money goes to a woman back then I would say a very small percentage went to anyone that did not fit the mold. So we had to go to Fort Lee, New Jersey to raise money at a fraction of the valuation that companies like ours, we raise money in Silicon Valley. But we didn’t know the difference, and it was just fine for us.
So raising money was a milestone. The other one was, we were inventing performance-based marketing. We’re inventing lead generation locally targeted marketing. And so when we came up with the idea of dealers paying not a subscription fee, but a cost per lead the that was a game changer. So as a dealer, you didn’t have to risk much, you will just pay us for every customer who had raised his hand and said, I want to buy a Honda Accord. All right, well, it’s your job to sell it, but only pay us if somebody you receive somebody who says I’m interested in a Honda Accord. And then of course, building this into a true complete service. So State Farm Insurance was a big milestone, because of the fact that we had an opportunity to monetize the consumers we already had.
Somebody wants to buy a Honda Accord. Well, they want to know how much it costs to insure that Honda. Allstate had no interest progressive had no interest, they farm some of the return my phone call, so for a few months, I would literally every month, fly to Bloomington, Illinois, and then middle of cornfields…
Jeremy Weisz 31:19
Not too far from me. Yeah.
Payam Zamani 31:22
And I would go out there, and he was surprised his name was Bob Reiner, he will say that nobody from Silicon Valley comes to visit us to find out one of those meetings is that okay? All sign-up, they got to go to that office. They are the office that negotiate. I’m like, oh, shoot, they got negotiators.
Jeremy Weisz 31:42
You’re negotiating with smugglers, though. So like, I have my money on you.
Payam Zamani 31:47
So, the Persian has to do with negotiation as a sport. So I went there, and I’m thinking, I want five bucks a lead, I’m gonna say 15. So you’ll negotiate me down to five. I said, 15. And the guy said, Is there any room? Like? No, I said, okay. I’m like, oh, shoot, I’m like, on one hand, I’m excited. On the other hand, I feel a little bit like, I charge too much. I said, okay, there’s a way that I can give you a significant discount.
And that is, if you pay me a year’s worth of leads cash upfront, is of how much is a $2 million dollars? Is it? Okay? So they gave me $2 million, which was, again, a game changer for us. Because it meant that we did not have to go out and raise more money and get more diluted.
Jeremy Weisz 32:36
So this point, you’re monetizing the leads, in addition to the dealerships with other companies, which is really smart. That’s great. And at what point are you considering going public?
Payam Zamani 32:51
Well, along the way, State Farm became interested in acquiring the business, which we decided not to sell, because we thought we’ll get a much higher valuation going public. And so I would say that about October of 1998, we decided that an IPO would make sense. So we worked on that process, hired Credit Suisse First Boston as our primary banker. And we started that process. And we filed in January of 1999. And a couple of weeks prior to that, we brought on board a new CEO, which I was on board with the idea of hiring a CEO.
But despite the fact that this guy was a good guy, I thought he was not the right guy for this job. We brought him on board. We took a company public, which should not be a great IPO. But the company had struggled, partly because he did not have the right leadership. And the board made up of VCs was having a really hard time making besides taking decisive action.
Jeremy Weisz 33:57
At that point, I think you’ve talked about this, they wanted someone gray-haired in the room, and they took you out of leadership. Yep. Right. And so I think at the time, you’re still advising them, but you’re no longer really working inside the company.
Payam Zamani 34:22
That’s correct. I mean, I had an executive vice president title, but you can imagine you cannot demote a founder from a CEO to something like that report to a guy who has no passion, no vision for changing the automotive industry, and then expect me to report that a guy that’s just not going to happen, but I was trying to make it work by the fact that he wasn’t showing any passion made it very difficult. And there was a time that he asked me to leave. I did, which was like two weeks after he joined, I left, and this is we have already filed for an IPO, and we’re middle of that whole process.
And of course, me being gone, caused the revenue of the company going the wrong direction. So he asked me to go back, and I happily went back and helped out, make sure the company is back on track. But this whole process opened my eyes to how I say, I shouldn’t say all VCs, but most of VCs work. Most VCs, they are not paid to create companies, they’re paid to maximize the IRR of their fund. And the maximization IRR can be very different than being in the business of building companies that can become significant success stories, 20 years down the road, which is what typically founders want.
So I realized that these guys just wanted to keep the stock price high, long enough, so they could sell. And it was tough, it was tough to see the company being managed in that manner.
Jeremy Weisz 36:03
Yeah, I loved your conversation with John Warrillow. And I encourage people, if they want to hear kind of the ins and outs, we won’t get into it now of like, the State Farm and how that deal almost went through, but didn’t, and then the transition to kind of how it all worked, when you were trying to help and maybe they didn’t want your help, and some of the nuances behind why it’s sometimes hard when you’re a public company to because you create waves, even if it’s going to be good on the long term, it could be really bad on the short term as far as stock price. So you’re stuck in a little bit of a hard spot, or the leadership team is but ultimately, so you go public, what point is your brother step away?
Payam Zamani 36:54
Yeah. My brother. So one thing I got to mention there is that part of the problem with the whole system is that as a founder, your ticket a company public for the first time, typically, and by the bankers, the VCs, they’ve experienced that process before. And so you’re excited when your stock price opens, was supposed to go out at 10. You go out at 14 opens at 27, close that 50. Like, oh, my God, this is amazing. But the company should have been worth 10, not 50.
So now all of a sudden, you’re in trouble, because you’re gonna have a tough road ahead until you in a sense, reached get the value to a level that the company should be worth 50 bucks a share the VCs at that point, all I care about is that keep it at 50. Do what you have to do keep it activity, so I can sell six months after the IPO. But I can’t do that the company did only 13 million in revenue last year, it should not have been worth 1,000,000,000, it should have been worth a couple 100 million dollars, which was supposed to be the price at IPO. But the problem is that the stock was manipulated by the bankers to accomplish a bunch of their goals, which are the odds in mind and the VC is it’s a mess.
It’s a mess of a process, at least and of course, it’s unethical, but it’s not illegal. And when you hear that system is rigged, it is rigged, it is very much right.
Jeremy Weisz 38:26
And it’s a spiral because like, it’s almost impossible to maintain it. And so if it goes down, that just creates a signal and then it goes down and down in I mean, it just creates cycle.
Payam Zamani 38:40
Affects you employees effects everything. I mean, nobody wants to have a company that the stock price goes down by a lot is not a company that is looked at favorably by even clients, employees anything. So it puts me in the penalty box a major way it’s a downward spiral. But then again, bankers don’t care about that. And typically VC’s don’t care as much about it either. Now, so my brother left, there was a day that the VCs were basically they’re paralyzed. We know we have a CEO that cannot do the job, but they are not willing to make that decision. And they’re making decisions that appear unethical, not illegal.
And my brother says I’m out of here, I cannot be a part of this. So he wrote his resignation on a napkin handed over to our outside counsel from Fenwick and West and walked out, never came back and I tried to be a positive influence for a couple of months did not work out. So I left too and that was the end of it. And I sold all my shares as did my brother. And I think as of 2000 I did not have a single share in the company.
Jeremy Weisz 39:52
Now, fast forward you reacquire AutoWeb. I’ll share my screen will poke around. We have one planet here, obviously, through your experience, you think of leadership and companies in a different way. Right then what you experienced with the IPL, but talk about reacquiring AutoWeb.
Payam Zamani 40:19
So, in 2022, so a year and a half ago, AutoWeb, basically, it was still a publicly traded company, but got to a point that it did not really have a path forward. They were out of cash, and were losing money. And they had a shrinking revenue. And they had to basically, let the public know, announced that they had a going concern issue, meaning that they would run out of cash. They had accumulated $350 million in losses since I had left. And so at that point, I made an offer to buy the company that turned out to be the highest offer they could come up with.
So I bought the company and closed the deal on September 1 2022. And I got to keep in mind, not a single employee from my days were left this was very different company. And many of the basics were still there. But it was a company that was in a very challenging situation losing a ton of money. But here’s the interesting part, March, September 1 2022, we bought the company, the next month, October of 2022, the company became profitable. And it’s been profitable since then. I’m always reminded of Gordon Bethune, who was the CEO of Continental Airlines. And they asked them, what did it take to make continental profitable, he said, it’s wasn’t that difficult.
We had routes that we lost money on, we had routes that we made money on, we stopped going to cities that we lost money on, it became profitable. The problem with many public companies is that they get hooked on revenue, not hooked on profits. And they keep chasing that revenue at any cost, because they have heard the whole thing that you got to keep growing. But growth at any cost growth while leading a carnage behind, I simply don’t sign up for that. So I like to run and build profitable companies. And by the way, when we took AutoWeb public in 1999, second to eBay, it was the only other profitable company on the internet.
Jeremy Weisz 42:34
Payam talk about some of the brands, I don’t know if you consider them brands underneath AutoWeb here, and if you’re watching the video, or you’re listening to audio, there is a video piece and we’re here on One Planet Group, you can see his AutoWeb here, and there’s some other services and kind of brands underneath there.
Payam Zamani 42:53
So AutoWeb ended up acquiring almost all small players that were in competition, so he owns a lot of brands. car.com is one of the brands usedcars.com. Auto By Tail, which was a major brand by itself went public and smaller brands like Car Smart Auto site. So there are many, many brand.
Jeremy Weisz 43:19
The cars.com and usedcar.com cars.com is also under the AutoWeb. That’s right. Yeah, those are amazing domains, by the way.
Payam Zamani 43:27
Yeah, I mean, so today, our automotive business accounts for about a million new cars sold in the US every year. So about one out of 15 of every new car that you see on the street, was sold through this platform. And then usedcars.com is more of a it’s a newer service is growing. But it has about a million used cars listings on it.
Jeremy Weisz 43:57
With COVID It must have been going crazy.
Payam Zamani 44:00
Well, I mean, I did not own the company at that point. The company had so many other problems at the time that I don’t think he was really able to take advantage of the opportunities that it had. But now being a profitable company being a stable business, we’re definitely seeing growth, usedcars.com since we acquire the business has tripled in size. And I think that when you think about autotrader.com being a billion-dollar business in the same space usedcars.com I do think has a bright future.
Jeremy Weisz 44:34
And then it’s not just AutoWeb talk about some of the other companies, you could see here Buyer Link and some other companies that are in other companies you’ve invested into.
Payam Zamani 44:46
Yeah, I mean Buyer Link is a company, our company we own that is in the performance space marketing space. It provides solutions for companies in the real estate, vertical and home services, even in the automotive industry, and it basically think about anyone that wants to gain access to online consumer demand, but in a locally targeted manner. And Buyer Link provides that it’s a large company, it’s a bigger company than AutoWeb. And it’s been around for a long time. Also, it’s got a patent at auction marketplace, that enables the services that it offers.
We own california.com, which I jokingly say is my love letter to California. California was where I got started in the US. And it’s been good to me. And so California.com is meant to shine the light on the best that California has to offer. We own Westland Pictures, which is basically a production company, we make movies, we make TV shows, documentaries, but basically the kinds of content that I like to say, brings light to the world.
Jeremy Weisz 46:06
Talk about One Planet Group, and kind of how you think about companies, not just that you start, but that you invest in as well.
Payam Zamani 46:18
Yeah, so One Planet Group is basically I would say, my playground, it’s, I don’t have any outside investors. So I get to decide how it operates. And I decided to create One Planet Group, when I really wanted to combine my spiritual values with my business life. I thought the idea of a business is just a business was way, way too archaic. Business is not just business, business touches humans, business touches the most noble creation on the planet. It’s not just business. And just the idea that why nonprofits stand for betterment of the world, and for profits for greed did not make any sense to me. So I wanted to combine my professional endeavors with living a life of service.
And that’s how One Planet Group came about. But I often say that it puts a pretty picture on my chaotic world. Because I get to really wrap the stuff that I’m involved in, whether it is the investments that we make, which we do about a few investments a year, we’ve invested in over 50 companies, and the companies we invest in, they are some of the best business ideas out there. But we only invest in entrepreneurs that sign up for our concept of innovation plus intention, which is basically that you consider the ripple effect of your decisions, whether it is where you invest money, what kind of products are you going to offer, let me give you an example.
If you are Snapchat, and you’re going to make it possible for your users to rate their friends, is that good? Is that good for the world, is that good for your users. So we want our entrepreneurs to consider those things. So any company we invest in, they get to sign up for what we call It’s a document that’s called for the betterment of the world that says for the love I have for humanity, that bunch of things I’m going to consider and do different than they’ve been done.
Jeremy Weisz 48:22
Payam I want to be on the first one a thank you, thank you for sharing your journey or stories it’s really incredible on so many levels. I want to encourage people to go to, you can check out the book, probably an Amazon or any other sites but crossingthedesertbook.com to learn more and the power of embracing life’s difficult journeys, depending on when you listen to this, he may have some upcoming book signings near you so you can check out the website but at least if you find any of this a little bit intriguing, not just a lot intriguing, check out the book on Audible or Amazon or any other places online. And Payam, thanks so much.
Payam Zamani 49:05
Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Jeremy Weisz 49:08
Thanks everyone.
