Strategy that ships.
I work with growth-stage companies and SMEs on digital transformation, product delivery, CRM, and MarTech. From the first brief through to measurable outcomes.
Former McKinsey. 10+ years across banking, SaaS, and performance marketing in Europe and Latin America.
Let's talkWhat I Do
Engagements are structured around what you actually need: a defined project, an ongoing fractional relationship, or targeted advisory at a critical moment. I work as an embedded partner, not a report factory.
Fractional Consulting
For founders and leadership teams who need a senior operator without the overhead of a full-time hire. I work inside your business on a retainer basis, owning workstreams, driving decisions, and keeping delivery moving.
Right for: scale-ups at a growth inflection, teams that need structure before they can scale.
Project-Based Engagements
Fixed scope, defined outcome. I take ownership of a specific challenge, digital transformation, CRM strategy, product discovery, or go-to-market sequencing, and see it through to delivery.
Right for: companies with a specific problem and a clear deadline.
MarTech & AdTech Implementation
I build and operate marketing technology stacks as a practitioner who has run these platforms inside client organisations and handed them off as functioning capabilities. Covers stack selection, configuration, campaign architecture, attribution frameworks, and team enablement.
Platforms: Google Marketing Platform · Meta Ads · Salesforce · HubSpot · Braze · Segment · Adobe Analytics · GA4 · VWO · Contentful
Right for: companies deploying or rebuilding a MarTech stack and needing someone who has done it before.
Advisory & Diagnostics
A structured review of a specific area: your CRM setup, conversion funnel, product roadmap, or MarTech architecture. Delivered as a clear brief with prioritised recommendations and a sequenced action plan.
Right for: teams with capability in place but needing an outside perspective before committing to a direction.
Experience
Every engagement below involved building, operating, or transforming something with a measurable commercial outcome.
Bootstrap digital platform for Baby Boomers and Gen X across Europe. Designed, built, and operated solo from zero: product, content, CRM, email, and analytics running across four European markets with a growing subscriber base and no external funding.
Publicly listed performance marketing company. Built the CRM and conversion function from scratch across 8 products in Asia, Europe, and the US. Designed campaign taxonomy, audience segmentation, attribution frameworks, and experimentation backlog. Ran 6+ campaigns per week across acquisition, activation, and retention using Braze. Achieved 205% conversion uplift through structured test-and-learn cycles with VWO and GA4.
Sole product owner across web, iOS, and Android with a distributed team of 15+. Owned the full lifecycle from roadmap definition through sprint delivery, API design decisions, and investor narrative. Scaled to 400K users with a 16% DAU/MAU ratio.
Led strategy-to-delivery engagements across the Americas for financial institutions navigating digital transformation. Built and transferred adtech and martech capabilities inside client organisations across Google Marketing Platform, Meta, Adobe Analytics, Salesforce, HubSpot, Segment, and Sprinklr. Developed transaction cost models, ROI frameworks, and investment business cases for payments, digital banking, and lending programmes. Produced 40+ transformation roadmaps for C-suite and product teams.
One of Central America's largest card-issuing banks. Built the bank's first digital payments product from zero and scaled it to 30% of total annual card acquisition. Managed card portfolio economics across Visa, Mastercard, and Amex, covering interchange costs, scheme fees, and cost-per-acquisition. Ran co-marketing programmes delivering 80% growth in card sales, 310% web uplift, and 288% mobile uplift. Built customer segmentation and lifecycle targeting models using Oracle Siebel CRM and core banking data.
Focus Areas
From LinkedIn
Things worth sharing
I inherited a backlog with 200 items and no priorities
Day one. 200 backlog items. No owner, no priority, no rationale. Here's the framework I used to go from chaos to a clear top-10 within two weeks — without throwing anything away.
The 5-question audit I run on every tech stack
Before recommending any tool change, I ask five questions. Most teams can't answer all five. That gap is usually where the real problem lives.
The 3 signs your startup is scaling chaos, not operations
Growth hides a lot of problems — until it doesn't. These three patterns show up in almost every scale-up I've worked with right before something breaks.
The fractional model is underused in Eastern Europe
Western startups have normalised fractional leadership. CEE hasn't caught up yet — but the conditions are perfect. Here's why the timing is right and what it actually looks like in practice.
About
I'm Luis Salas, an independent consultant based in Timișoara, Romania. I work with early-stage startups, scale-ups, and SMEs across Europe, with a particular focus on fintech and growth-stage companies in the CEE region.
Former McKinsey. I have run product ownership through a full SaaS launch at KIMO, built the CRM and conversion function at Raketech, and owned digital banking and card acquisition at BAC Credomatic. Alongside consulting, I build products: Una is a digital platform for older adults across Europe, designed, built, and operated independently.
The work across all of it follows the same pattern: translate complex requirements into structured plans, coordinate delivery across functions, and ship things that move commercial outcomes.
Contact
Let's work together
If you have a specific challenge in mind, use the form below. I'll respond within one business day.