The Company

We build the foundation.
You build the product.

4Rooks is a Hamburg-based software company on a mission to standardise the embedded software layer that every connected product depends on, but no one should have to build alone.

Our thesis

Hardware is a commodity.
The software above the base layer isn't — yet.

Connected products behave like icebergs. The features customers see (the UI, the product capabilities, the brand experience) are only a fraction of the engineering work. Below the surface sits connectivity, security, hardware abstraction, lifecycle management, certification. That's where most of the cost and risk accumulates.

Most manufacturers rebuild this layer independently, for every product, from scratch. We think that's the wrong model. ROSA separates it from the product entirely, so your engineering effort concentrates where it actually creates differentiation. And we carry the risk of maintaining it, so you don't have to.

Founder

Markus Fischer

Markus Fischer

CEO & Founder

ROSA is the direct result of 15+ years building production software across automotive, cloud, and embedded platforms, seeing the same problem manifest at every scale.

At Mercedes-Benz, working with Jolla on containerised Android for Linux, Markus was part of a 5-person team that outpaced a multi-billion-euro organisation of thousands. They started two years late and were still the first to have a fully working OS — because they built on a reusable, well-structured platform instead of rebuilding from scratch.

ROSA brings those learnings from mobile and automotive into the wider IoT world. The goal: make embedded development as accessible and scalable as software development has become everywhere else.

Background

Mercedes-Benz MBUX & MBUX App Support

Experience

15+ years embedded & platform engineering

The team

Strong team with deep embedded platform experience

Sebastian Schüller

Sebastian Schüller

Chief Technology Officer

  • —Launched 3 highly optimised IoT products from development to production
  • —Built and led embedded platform teams focused on scalable, reusable systems
  • —Deep expertise in distributed software and AI-driven components
Kate Balmforth

Kate Balmforth

Chief of Staff

  • —10+ years in high-trust support roles to executive teams
  • —Strong international network across C-level executives and senior decision-makers
  • —Proven track record coordinating cross-stakeholder execution
Alyona Dovhosheia

Alyona Dovhosheia

CFO

  • —Assisted in raising $250m+ in venture funding across Pre-Seed to Series C globally
  • —Worked with 100+ startups across 45+ verticals
  • —CFO experience with early-stage businesses in Europe, US and Australia
4Rooks team

Get in touch

Hamburg, Germany  ·  contact@4rooks.com

Send us a message