Munich Startup: What career path have you had so far?
Ruth Bosse: I’ve been active in municipal politics for 18 years, have a master’s degree in mathematics and one in business administration, and also did my doctorate on political climate protection measures. Before founding Ark Climate, I was a project manager at McKinsey. There I advised cities on climate protection and adaptation. Among other things, we developed the climate roadmap for the city of Stuttgart in 2022.
Munich Startup: What motivated you to found the company?
Ruth Bosse: I want to contribute to us finally making better political decisions that can be implemented more quickly and are more comprehensible to citizens – especially on such an important topic as climate protection. I also hope this will strengthen our democracy.
On the other hand, I want to create a place where outstanding people can not only really make a difference, but also develop personally – and do so while enjoying their work together.
Entrepreneurial path and financing
Munich Startup: What would you have liked to know before your first founding?
Ruth Bosse: At the beginning of founding, I believed I first had to prove to myself that I could do it. As a result, I often worked longer than necessary and questioned my decisions and intuition too much. Today I approach things with more confidence and assurance – and in this way develop my own founding style step by step.
Munich Startup: How has your company been financed so far?
Ruth Bosse: A year after our founding, 16 municipalities are already among our customers and we have a turnover of 500,000 euros. At the end of 2024, we also completed a pre-seed round of 1 million euros. This is led by the climate tech venture capital investor Satgana – accompanied by other VCs and business angels with sound experience in govtech and climate tech.
We also benefit from funding programs, such as the EXIST startup grant. An additional boost was also the award with the founder prize “Digital Innovation” from the BMWK, presented by former Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck.
What looking beyond the obvious brings
Munich Startup: When and where do you get your best ideas?
Ruth Bosse: The best ideas come to me through shared exchange – in conversations with my team, with customers, people from politics and climate protection, but also beyond that: through joint sports or art.
This look beyond the obvious has contributed much to the vision behind Ark: Originally intended as a tool for municipal climate protection management, it quickly became clear: outdated software is not a niche problem, but affects administrations fundamentally – across all political fields of action.
This is how the idea grew to make Ark much more: With the Ark Operating System, a digital operating system for modern administrations should be created in the long term – data-driven, efficient, and citizen-focused. With the goal not only to plan and implement decisions better, but also to motivate people to more democratic voting behavior again.
Munich Startup: What are your 3 favorite work tools?
Ruth Bosse: What is particularly important to me in my work at Ark: everyone takes on a lot of responsibility and works independently. To keep track, three tools help me especially:
- Asana: Helps me to prioritize clearly and pursue the right tasks at the right time. It helps to stay focused and move forward quickly – especially important with high personal responsibility and tight timing.
- Notion: Our central knowledge and content tool. It enables structured yet flexible collaboration – whether for internal guidelines, product documentation, or customer-facing texts.
- ChatGPT: I use it daily for quick input, to brainstorm content, initial research, or to structure ideas and texts.
Ruth Bosse: Personal perspectives
Munich Startup: Your top tip on “pitching”?
Ruth Bosse: Really understand where the other person is right now. What is currently driving them? What personal interests, reservations, or questions might be in the room? It’s important to remain realistic: we are deep in the topic, the other person often is not. When someone invests their own money, they rightfully ask critical questions. And if the conversation partner just came out of an intensive meeting, then it’s probably best to create space at the beginning rather than just diving in right away.
Munich Startup: Does it seem like a good time to you to found a company right now? Why?
Ruth Bosse: We’re currently seeing a lot of movement in the public sector, administration, politics, and modernization of the state: digitalization is gaining momentum – a good example is the newly created digital ministry. More and more access is also being created for startups, for example through raising procurement limits for contracts. At the same time, climate protection is and remains one of the central social and political issues of our time. So as a climate tech and govtech startup, we’re in the right place.
Through municipal political engagement, we were able to recognize these developments early and think along with them – and so used the momentum before this govtech wave, like we’re seeing right now in the USA, really got rolling here. Now is exactly the right time to go into the future together with the public sector using digital, solution-oriented approaches.
Munich Startup: What technology or industry would you focus on with your next founding?
Ruth Bosse: I think women’s health is incredibly important and I would like to make progress here. It’s amazing how little research goes into women’s health. Even though we make up 50 percent of the population, we’re often considered a niche. For many conditions like endometriosis, PMS, or severe period pain, there is hardly any solid knowledge – and even less effective solutions.
More focus on problem orientation
Munich Startup: What do you think could be improved at the Munich startup location?
Ruth Bosse: Munich is generally a very good location for founding – the scene is large, well-networked, and attracts many motivated career starters who are interested in startups. What I think should come more into focus is problem orientation: I often get the impression that some are more interested in “founding a startup” rather than really wanting to solve a concrete, relevant problem. If we encouraged more founders to think from the problem side, we could create much more effective solutions here.
Munich Startup: Which founder would you like to meet in person someday? And what would you ask them?
Ruth Bosse: My grandfather. He founded his own company in 1983 that sold machines for newspaper printing worldwide. Unfortunately, he died when I was still a small child. I would have liked to ask him what it was like to found a company when nobody knew the term “startup” yet – and I would have liked to pick up a few things from him.
