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 brought him in to rebuild a struggling product team. He very quickly developed a cohesive strategy and structure — bringing clarity into what the team was going to achieve, when, and what they needed to get there. I was able to offload completely unto Catalin and focus on other areas of the business. He started delivering results straight away.
Markel Palmstierna
COO · Omni Calculator
Implementing a billing system is daunting, but Catalin steered the whole process well with his in-depth technical expertise and professionalism — with calm and elegant manner. He will be a huge asset to any companies or clients.
Jing He
VP Finance · Verifone (2Checkout)
Catalin has been instrumental in enhancing our processes, which significantly improved our estimation and delivery. I've always appreciated his calm approach while tackling complicated issues, and his ability to move things forward.
Lucie Staněk Merunková
Senior Product Designer · Wrike
Want to talk?
A 30-minute call to scope. No charge, no pressure — we'll know quickly if it's a fit.