Hello Sifted reader,

Used car marketplace Cazoo was one of Europe's highest-valued startups when it floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021. But since then its share price has plummeted 99%, it's withdrawn from the EU altogether and its market cap now stands at just $83m.

So what happened?

"They raised huge amounts of money at an extremely aggressive valuation, which forced them to try for hypergrowth,” one source close to the company tells Sifted. "Cazoo didn’t know how to effectively invest the money they were given."

One investor close to the company when it floated also tells Sifted the timing of the IPO "was the worst in history".

Freya Pratty digs into what went wrong.

Also from the Sifted newsroom:

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