Cazoo was founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneur Alex Chesterman OBE with an ambition to build an e-commerce brand that disrupted the "property-heavy" motor retail sector and allowed people to buy cars entirely online and get then delivered to their home. Attracting investors, it was able to spend huge sums on marketing and sponsorships and an ill-fated expansion into mainland Europe. In 2023, before he left the business nine months later, multi-millionaire Chesterman said he was “incredibly proud of everything the team at Cazoo has achieved” in a financial results statement that revealed the online used car retailer’s £704 million losses for 2022. Cazoo's pivot to a marketplace will leave it positioned similarly to another of Chesterman's past creations, the property marketplace Zoopla, which markets houses for estate agents.