ABOUT
Catalin Adam
Fractional Chief Product Officer · RootCause Consulting
Embedded product leadership for SaaS scale-ups. I build the operating layer your team runs without me — then leave.
years senior product leadership
SaaS verticals
named clients to date
operating since
Bio
I'm Catalin Adam — a fractional Chief Product Officer working out of the EU. RootCause Consulting is my B.V., operating since 2021 as the contracting entity for embedded product leadership engagements.
Clients to date: Verifone, Wrike, Ready2Order, Omnicalculator, and a current hospitality SaaS engagement (via the investment fund that owns the company). Earlier salaried roles include Electrolux, where I led product across consumer hardware and digital.
The thesis I work from is adapted from my "scaling in control" deck: the binding constraint on most product orgs isn't strategy or talent — it's that the founder is still making every product decision personally, and there's no operating layer that lets the team make them well without her. The work is to build that layer, then leave.
How I work: embedded under a B2B contract via RootCause Consulting, focused on the outcomes that move the business — faster shipping, defensible numbers, the right next hire. Every engagement is designed to leave the founder less in the loop, not more dependent on me.
How I think about this work
Four lenses every engagement is measured against. They aren't separate services — they're what determines whether the work actually changed anything.
De-risking product decisions
Most product decisions are made on incomplete evidence under time pressure. The job is to reduce the surface area of those decisions — fewer guesses, more pre-committed checkpoints, faster rollback when something is wrong.
Speed to scale
Discovery cycles measured in weeks, not quarters. Specs that don't get re-litigated. The gap between "we have an idea" and "we know if it worked" is the operating signal I optimise for.
Runway preservation
Engagements are fixed-fee or transparently time-billed. The framing lets a founder keep more of the runway and convert more of it into shipped product — instead of into headcount overhead, advisory retainers, or wrong hires made too early.
Talent scalability
The operating layer I build is what a new PM reads on day one to know how to make a decision here. Hiring loops, scorecards, and onboarding all anchor on it. The org stops depending on one senior person to keep moving.
Verticals worked across
- Fintech / Payments
- Verifone (2Checkout) — billing systems, B2B ecommerce, CPQ
- Productivity SaaS
- Wrike — collaboration software, enterprise workflows
- Vertical SaaS
- Ready2Order — POS for SMB hospitality
- Ad-supported SaaS
- Omnicalculator — ~14M MAU, programmatic A/B testing
- Hospitality SaaS
- Current engagement — guest experience, freemium pricing
What clients and senior peers say
I was able to offload completely unto Catalin and focus on other areas of the business.
Markel Palmstierna
Chief Operating Officer
Catalin's got DRIVE — he'll work any project relentlessly and get it done, moving past any obstacles in his way.
Bogna Szyk
Chief Operating Officer
A rare ability to execute complex projects while maintaining high standards — a true partner and a pleasure to work with.
Sivan Kadosh
General Manager
One of the best PMs I have worked with. He will be a huge asset to any companies or clients.
Jing He
VP Finance
Instrumental in enhancing our processes — significantly improved our estimation and delivery.
Lucie Staněk Merunková
Senior Product Designer
Want to talk?
A 30-minute call to scope. No charge, no pressure — we'll know quickly if it's a fit.