Product & growth leader in fintech and marketplaces. I ship software platforms for the Romanian market, build growth systems, and research how modern software teams deliver.https://cristianfagarasan.com/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/your-site-is-a-product/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/your-site-is-a-product/Rebuilding my site was the easy half. The real work came after launch: analytics, structured data, an email identity, and a newsletter that ships itself — all on free tiers.Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/ai-search-new-distribution/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/ai-search-new-distribution/A growing share of product discovery now happens inside AI assistants instead of search result pages. Here's how I think about building for that channel — including why Firmoscop ships an MCP server.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/phd-while-shipping/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/phd-while-shipping/I've been running doctoral research on software delivery alongside full-time product leadership since 2018. People assume the two compete for time. Mostly, they feed each other.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/safe-without-the-religion/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/safe-without-the-religion/I've delivered large-scale products through SAFe, published research on its adoption, and hold the certifications. The framework wars miss the point: frameworks are scaffolding for conversations, not operating systems.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/what-certifications-are-for/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/what-certifications-are-for/PMP, PMI-ACP, Six Sigma Master Black Belt, SAFe, PROSCI, Harvard CORe — I've collected more credentials than most people think are reasonable. Here's my honest accounting of what they're worth.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/shipping-on-government-apis/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/shipping-on-government-apis/Bono integrates natively with Romania's e-invoicing system; Firmoscop reads five official registries. Building on government infrastructure is a discipline of its own — here's what it demands.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/ai-agents-build-my-platforms/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/ai-agents-build-my-platforms/J is a multi-agent development suite I designed: planners, implementers, and a review panel that ships production code for Bono and Firmoscop. The interesting part isn't code generation — it's process engineering.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/four-acquisitions-later/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/four-acquisitions-later/I led the discovery-to-delivery integration of four acquired businesses into Toptal's platform and operations. M&A integration is a product problem wearing a corporate costume.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/scaling-6-to-13-squads/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/scaling-6-to-13-squads/I scaled Toptal's Growth Product organisation from 6 to 13 agile squads and served as interim VP. The bottleneck was never the number of engineers.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/why-i-built-firmoscop/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/why-i-built-firmoscop/In Romania, answering «should I give this company payment terms?» means checking five public registries and losing an hour. I built Firmoscop to make it one verdict: green, yellow, or red.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/why-teams-miss-deadlines/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/why-teams-miss-deadlines/My PhD research studies how software teams deliver — agile at scale, metrics, leadership. The most cited finding is also the least glamorous: methodology matters less than the discipline around it.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/rebuilding-my-website/https://cristianfagarasan.com/blog/rebuilding-my-website/Why I'm replacing my AI-generated CV page with a site I actually own — built for projects, research, and writing.Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT