'10 years in corporate hindered my ability as a startup founder'

Interview with Ben Taylor, ex-founder and CEO of condoms and lube brand Roam.

Next up in our series of longform interviews, is one we did live in at a breakfast event back in April. This was with Ben Taylor, who I’ve known for a handful of years and had the pleasure of working with for a few months at the start of our agency journey.

This is the writeup of that interview.

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Ex-L’Oréal marketer Ben Taylor leapt into DTC condoms-and-lube brand Roam, trusting slick branding and VC fuel to beat a Durex-ruled market. When Meta blocked ads and product-market fit proved mushy, the cash burned, friends were fired and the company was sold. His takeaway: start with a sharp customer pain point, validate fast, and remember that humility (and the right people) outranks hype.

Firing friends: a glimpse of the void

Early in the story of Roam, a moment arose that highlighted the human cost of early-stage entrepreneurship for Ben Taylor, the company’s co-founder and CEO.

“I had to make people redundant,” Ben recalls. “These were friends; people I considered among the best in the consumer product space.”

In early 2022, during a downturn in the tech market, consumer confidence was low, and a memo from Y Combinator urged founders to “batten down the hatches.” The market contracted sharply, making it difficult for revenue-reliant businesses to secure venture capital. Ben describes this period as “the most difficult year of my life.”

As a first-time founder, he felt pressure to inspire others to join him. By late 2021, he had built a team of twelve, but redundancies followed when venture capital dried up.

“I regard myself as a failed entrepreneur,” he says. “But of course, success is subjective. Situations like this force deep introspection. This failure gave me conviction about how I’d do things differently.”

“There are two paths you can take as an entrepreneur,” Ben reflects. “You can be closed off or choose to be open and humble. I’d always take the latter route.”

This marked Ben’s entry into what he calls “the void.” After over a decade in the corporate world, he found himself in a space where founders grapple with market dynamics and their own decisions. It’s where the startup dream becomes very real.

Before delving deeper into Ben’s journey through the void and the lessons learned, we should return to the beginning.

From beer to beauty

Ben grew up in his parents’ pub in the Yorkshire Dales. “At the time, I thought it was fantastic,” he says, “But in retrospect, it was a bit strange. Still, I grew up in my parents’ business, so entrepreneurship was innate.”

That early immersion planted the seeds for his future. But rather than diving straight into startup life, Ben chose a more traditional route with global brewing company Molson Coors. “It sounds sensible, but it felt counterintuitive,” he reflects, “Still, I thought, ‘I'm here, I’ll make the most of it.’”

He fulfilled that promise, staying for three years before making a “strange transition from beer to beauty” at L’Oréal, which marked a decade-long career across borders and brands. “I wanted to work for a top-flight FMCG, and L’Oréal felt like the right cultural fit,” Ben explains.

Over ten years, Ben worked on brands including L’Oréal Paris, Maybelline, and Garnier, progressing from commercial to global marketing. However, a deeper desire for entrepreneurship was stirring. “There’s something about accountability and ownership, building your vision and executing against it,” he says. “While you can find moments of that in a corporate context, you're always executing someone else’s strategy.”

That feeling, unaddressed for over a decade, reached a breaking point when, in early 2020, Ben left L’Oréal. Roam, an idea that had lived in his head, became a reality.

The first step

“I thought I was ready,” Ben says. “I believed I knew how to start and run a business. But what I’d learned in the corporate world didn’t apply. It was antithetical to startup life and actually hindered my progress.”

Ben was thrust into a world of lean testing, pivoting, and striving for product-market fit, all while the global economy was shutting down. “Those first six months were relentless,” he recalls. “It was exciting, but it was a massive learning curve. The whole experience was a journey of exploration. I had to forget many of the constructs I’d learned in a corporate setting and embrace this new journey.”

Despite these challenges, Ben drew inspiration from L’Oreal’s culture of innovation. “The entire business model is based on innovation, which intrigued me as a marketer. The idea of bringing something to market that meets a real consumer need truly motivated me.”

So, even as the world around him descended into uncertainty, Ben pressed on into the void, navigating a business landscape he barely recognised and forging a founder’s mindset as he went.

Roam wasn’t born in a day

Ben left L’Oréal in 2020 with a clear sense of direction shaped by years of observing consumer behaviour and branding. He wanted to build a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand. “I was a traditional commercial marketer,” he explains, “but I became fascinated by what was happening in DTC. Connecting brands directly to consumers felt like the purest form of marketing.”

For Ben, DTC represented a return to his passion for consumer products. “Some people stumble upon such a strong insight that they have no choice but to pursue it,” he says. “I knew I needed to be proactive and take that step.”

He began by examining where disruption was happening in the health and beauty sector. His strategy was methodical: identify a category that had been least disrupted and pursue it. His initial target was dental care. However, after further consideration, he and Alex, his Roam co-founder and fellow L’Oréal alumnus, concluded it wasn’t the right fit. Then something shifted.

Taking on the big players

Alex had joined Harry’s, a DTC men’s grooming brand, and began to see opportunities differently. Inspired by Harry’s model, he suggested to Ben that they explore the sexual wellness market. “My initial reaction was to say no,” Ben admits, but he soon became more open to the idea.

Durex dominated this market, built on archaic principles rooted mainly in customers’ insecurities. Meanwhile, cultural narratives around sexuality were evolving, with discussions on sexual health and empowerment becoming more open and inclusive. Yet, no major brand was leading that dialogue.

Despite Durex’s immense strides in its positioning, questions remained about its right to lead this new conversation. With an estimated 85% market share, there was a lack of innovation. “The category consisted mainly of condoms, lubes, and a few sexual devices, targeted to specific consumers,” Ben explains. “There was a huge opportunity for something fresh and innovative.”

Roam began to take shape, but like many startups, it initially faced a misstep. “When I think back to when I first pitched to VCs, my opening line was ‘We’re going to reinvent a category,’” Ben recalls. “That was completely the wrong start.” He realised that innovation means addressing real needs that align with consumer lifestyles, instead of trying to convince people that a new solution is better than their trusted options. He should have identified his target audience, their need states within sexual wellness, and what solutions were available – or lacking – in the market. “Then I should have developed a product tailored for that specific customer that they couldn't find anywhere else,” he admits.

First foray into customer acquisition

Roam successfully acquired its first hundred customers through Meta’s platforms. The product seemed ideal for marketers: a sleek, modern freemium kit featuring a three-pack of condoms and a mini lube, elegantly packaged to fit through a letterbox. “Our branding received a lot of praise,” Ben says. “It had a purpose, and it resonated.”

But beautiful branding doesn’t guarantee equal sustainable unit economics. “Branding won’t deliver profitable growth at scale in isolation,” he explains. The activation rate was too low. Consumers paid only for postage, with the hope that they’d convert to buying full-price products on a regular basis. “Our cost of acquisition was about £10, and the percentage of people going on to buy again didn’t justify that,” Ben explains.

Stuck in a D2C dilemma, with a beautiful brand but no reliable way to monetise it, they pivoted to an omnichannel strategy, securing listings in 500 Boots and 450 Superdrug stores, with strong visibility. Roam also joined Sainsbury’s Future Brands programme, reaching 350 stores, and launched online via Amazon and other pure-play digital retailers.

Ben recognised that the stigma surrounding sexual wellness extended far beyond consumers to VCs and media platforms. “Our domain was blocked on Meta,” he explains. “Not just the ads, but our entire website domain. It was a catastrophe.”

Without the ability to track performance or optimise ad spend, their digital growth engine stalled. So they turned to a more traditional route by engaging in a media-for-equity deal with Channel 4. Meanwhile, Roam built a strong foundation across other marketing channels. They partnered with Novos, an elite SEO agency, to drive organic traffic and effectively utilised SEM dialled to capture intent at the bottom of the funnel. “Yet I couldn’t raise the bridge to Series A,” Ben says.

Roam’s next moves

By early 2021, Roam had established a product, a brand, and a vision. However, as Ben acknowledges, it lacked a clear strategy. “Our strategy was to quit our jobs, fully commit, and see what happens,” he admits. This willingness to leap into the void is essential for founders, but it exposed the team to the hard realities of building a physical product business.

“Minimum order quantities on condoms are very high,” Ben explains. “There are only a handful of global manufacturers, and they’re tough to negotiate with. My first order cost £150,000.”

Despite this, Ben believed condoms were critical to Roam’s business model. “At the time, condoms were the only product I could put on a subscription that made commercial sense.”

With that conviction, Roam set out to raise a £350,000 pre-seed angel round. However, like many early-stage founders, Ben faced a universal truth of venture building. “Everything costs twice as much and takes twice as long,” he says.

Soon after beginning their fundraising journey, the team was introduced to venture capitalists, which changed the conversation. A term sheet arrived, turning their modest angel ambitions into a more significant early-stage funding round.

“We ended up taking VC funding at a very early stage,” Ben reflects. “Then a smaller fund followed. Suddenly, we had a much larger round than we had anticipated. Whether I used it in the right way is another matter.”

Challenging instincts

Roam secured funding in early 2021, during a thriving venture capital market. Ben believed a healthy seed round would follow suit. “Our lead VC was a seed-stage fund with an average of £3 million,” he recalls. “We felt we had the right support and built our strategy around that.”

However, building that strategy required Ben to challenge the instincts shaped by his upbringing in a family-run pub where growth developed organically. “You built the infrastructure to support growth,” he says. “But I gaslit myself a little, believing infrastructure was needed from the start.”

Ultimately, they raised a seed round of around £2 million in cash and £1 million in media-for-equity from Channel 4. But the funds were drip-fed throughout 2022, hampering their ability to scale. By the end of 2023, the reality began to set in.

“We’d started raising a bridge to Series A,” Ben says. “To progress, we needed to reach around £4 to £5 million in ARR.” They had the distribution and the support from Channel 4, but it wasn’t enough. The market had shifted, and Roam’s metrics weren’t strong enough to secure the bridge funding. “It was a chicken and egg situation,” Ben says. “I needed the investment to gain traction. But I needed the traction to attract investment.”

In April 2024, Ben decided to transact, thereby closing this chapter. Today, Roam continues to operate successfully as a business. Although his time with Roam didn’t end as he’d initially hoped, it provided Ben with valuable experience.

The experience is all

“The win is in the experience,” Ben says. “I feel incredibly grateful to have gone through that.” This isn’t just a platitude; it’s a genuine, hard-earned belief forged by stepping into the void and learning quickly because there was no other option.

“When I step back and look at it objectively, we achieved a lot,” Ben says. Roam created a brand that resonated with consumers. It developed products that customers didn’t just buy; they preferred them over existing options. More than that, it challenged the industry’s outdated norms and elevated the conversation.

“People appreciated that we were trying to foster a positive discussion about sexual wellness,” Ben explains. “We didn’t do it at scale, but we did it. And I’m proud of that.”

For Ben, the true measure of the experience wasn’t about its longevity, but about whether it mattered while it lasted. “From a brand mission perspective,” he says, “I’m pleased with what we did.”

Upon reflection, then, what lessons did he learn from the experience?

Lessons in reinvention

Roam began with a moment of inspiration from its co-founder, Alex. As a gay man, Alex recognised an absence of brands that truly represented and respected his identity and community.

“Alex felt there was a need for a brand that really reflected his sexuality,” Ben says. “I supported that mission completely, although I sometimes felt like an outsider.”

That discomfort proved informative for Ben. It helped him appreciate the importance of personal connection in entrepreneurship and the emotional drive that comes from solving a problem or building something for one’s community. “My next business will be something that really resonates with me,” Ben says. “It will be rooted in my own experience or aimed at solving issues for my own community.”

Roam’s mission was sincere, and its impact was substantial. The team established an inclusive and innovative brand in a market dominated by outdated norms and a single entrenched player. The products were fresh, the tone was distinct, and the approach was unapologetically modern.

Ben learned that, when it comes to reinventing a category, you can’t simply outbrand the incumbent. Real disruption stems from addressing a pain point you genuinely feel. Conviction is just as vital as creativity. And sometimes, even if a solution doesn’t scale, it can still succeed because of what it represents.

Putting product first

During his time at Roam, Ben learned that building a brand is about obsessing over the product, not outsmarting the model. Early on, he focused on unit economics rather than product-market fit, believing that customer acquisition costs (CACs) and average order values were more tangible goals. However, as acquisition costs soared, Roam’s initial strategy of recurring condom subscriptions faltered. “From a commercial perspective, it made sense,” Ben explains. “But from a consumer perspective, it didn’t. Imagine overstocking someone on condoms. That’s a terrible feeling to induce.”

The mistake was prioritising the business model without validating whether the product resonated with customers. “You should never start a business with the model in mind,” he says. ”Start by asking, ‘What is the product I’m building, and is it solving a real consumer need?’ Then ask, ‘Does the model support that?’”

Roam had product strength, mainly due to co-founder Alex’s intuition and experience in physical product development. But the roadmap lacked cohesion. “We weren’t clear enough on who we were building for. We tried to be something for everyone.”

That lack of specificity diluted both product and performance. Without a clear consumer archetype, media spend became inefficient, customer lifetime value stagnated, and the brand struggled to convert at scale.

In hindsight, Ben would choose a niche and focus on a differentiated product for a specific consumer. Only after that product gained real traction would he consider expanding the range or competing more broadly.

“The starting point has to be the product. You build the best product for a real, unmet need, and then the business model should support that, not vice versa,” he says.

Getting comfortable with not knowing

One of the most significant personal shifts Ben experienced during his journey with Roam was the transformation of his identity, shaped by years in the corporate world. He found that this mindset was often incompatible with startups.

“I had to consciously free myself from many of the constructs I’d learned in a corporate context,” Ben explains. “It would have been easy to cling to those beliefs. But I chose to accept that I didn’t know what I was doing.”

That acceptance didn’t come easily, as corporate life trains you to provide answers and demonstrate competency. In contrast, startups thrive in uncertainty. “Initially, that was terrifying,” Ben admits. However, a coach taught him that the very nature of a startup is not knowing what you’re doing.

That insight helped him embrace the chaos of the void. “If someone’s already done it, it’s not innovative. And if it’s not innovative, it’s not a startup,” he says.

Ben realised that corporate life's logic and systematic thinking still had a role to play, making him more effective in business. This dual perspective, of startup humility and corporate discipline, now defines his outlook. He’s learned to respect uncertainty and understand that not knowing isn’t a weakness, but a creative force in entrepreneurship. “I'm grateful for my experience across both worlds, and hope to apply what I have learned in my next venture,” he says.

The power of people

When Ben reflects on his journey with Roam, one lesson stands out above all the product strategies and funding cycles: “You can’t do it without the support of the people around you.” Stepping out of the corporate world into the void, one quickly realises there’s no job description, boss, or clear career path. “You need support,” Ben says. “You need someone to suggest the way.”

That support comes from partners who share your burdens, investors who offer honest counsel, mentors who listen when you’re unsure, and, importantly, from other founders who understand the weight you carry. “You need someone who can offer mentorship,” Ben explains, “someone who can let you know if you’re on the right track.”

Ben describes this support system as magical, not because it’s perfect, but because of its generosity. Unlike the corporate world, mentorship in the startup world is given freely, based on shared experience. “That’s a beautiful aspect of startup culture,” he says. “Once you’re part of it, you recognise its importance.”

Even more remarkable is the pay-it-forward instinct that characterises startup communities. Once someone receives help, they rarely forget it. “The time people have given me because they’ve been through similar experiences is beautiful,” Ben says. Now, with time and experience, he’s eager to be that source of support for others. “I’m looking forward to giving back,” he says.

What’s next?

When Ben’s startup journey ended, he took time to reflect and consolidate his lessons learned. He began reconnecting with old contacts, which led to a pivotal conversation with a former general manager at L'Oréal’s consumer products division who had successfully moved between the corporate world and startups. “I don't want to go back to corporate, but I was curious about how he made that transition,” Ben explains. Their discussion opened doors for him; his contact invited him to join an intrapreneurial initiative within L'Oréal called Noli, a beauty platform that personalises recommendations for customers.

Initially a consultant, helping to shape the business strategy, Ben shifted his focus to building the growth function. “Noli is quite revolutionary within the beauty space,” Ben says. “And of course, I’ve always been consumer product-focused, so it’s been interesting to work on.”

The experience has been an eye-opener for Ben. “It’s very nuanced,” he says, “especially because it’s a corporate-backed initiative. It’s fascinating to see some of the decisions made when you have that level of resources.”

So what’s next for Ben? He doesn’t claim to have all the answers. But he’s not in the void anymore. He’s constantly experimenting, learning, and adapting, just as any founder should. Whether Noli becomes the next long-term chapter or simply another step toward his own venture, he doesn’t know. But it’s clear that Ben has travelled a long way from that pub in the Yorkshire Dales.

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If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy some of our previous interviews