Driven: the urban space man who built a £12m parking site

TO any parent worried about their child quitting a steady, well-paid job in a global corporation to “do their own thing”, take heed from Anthony Eskinazi.

- Lucy Tobin

After passing the long interview process to secure a graduate job at Deloitte, he quit after six weeks to spend four years working, alone, on a parking business idea he’d had during a gap year.

“I knew nothing about funding, or business, and the start-up scene had barely started in the UK,” Eskinazi says of his early days as an entrepreneur, launching what was then Parkatmyhouse, back in 2006. Today that business, rebranded as JustPark, has been valued at almost £90 million. It’s safe to say Eskinazi isn’t missing his shortlived role at Deloitte.

He first had the idea behind JustPark, which connects drivers looking for parking with empty driveways and parking spots, when he was unable to find parking around a sports stadium in San Francisco.

“I was off to watch the SF Giants play,” Eskinazi recalls. “I noticed an empty driveway and thought it would be win-win if I could pay that homeowner to use their space.”

The 38-year-old had dabbled in entrepreneurship before: “I bought and sold second-hand games consoles on eBay while I was at uni, which taught me a lot about marketing, marketplaces and customer service. And I started building very basic websites when I was 12, my dad taught me how to code.”