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For years, EIS deal flow has skewed heavily towards software, fintech and consumer brands. Easy to understand, easy to pitch, easy to find.
Which leaves advisers with a harder question.
If a client's EIS allocation is spread across a dozen companies that all monetise the same way, face the same adoption risks and exit to the same buyers, how diversified is it really?
Deep MakeTech - advanced manufacturing, materials science and industrial technology - answers that question with a genuinely different set of technologies, commercial risks and value drivers. Here are five reasons it is earning a place on more recommendation lists.
The funding skew is real, and it changes who you compete with
Software attracted venture capital for a good reason. Once it is built, it can be distributed at almost no marginal cost.
Deep MakeTech does not work that way. A new battery chemistry or coating process typically needs laboratory work, specialist equipment, a pilot line, certification and manufacturing scale-up before it earns its first commercial pound. That is more capital over a longer period.
Those are real risks. They are also a filter. Assessing whether a pilot line will hold its yield at ten times the volume is not a judgement most generalist funds are staffed to make, and the funds that cannot make it tend not to bid.
So the useful distinction is not software versus hardware. It is capital-light innovation versus capital-intensive innovation, and whether a manager has the technical bench and the patience the latter demands.
The risk profile is different, not just the sector
A failed SaaS company usually fails quietly - the code doesn’t sell, the team moves on. Deep MakeTech businesses are typically built around protectable IP, physical assets, and processes that retain value even when a specific commercial path doesn’t work out.
Take EverQuest’s investment in TaiSan, a sodium-ion battery technology business - the underlying IP and manufacturing process hold value independent of any single customer contract or product cycle, in a way a piece of software typically doesn’t. That doesn’t eliminate risk - EIS is still high-risk, capital-at-risk investing - but it changes the shape of the downside in ways worth explaining to clients who’ve only ever seen software-style binary outcomes.
A single-thesis fund builds different judgement than a generalist one
Most EIS managers run sector-agnostic funds, evaluating whatever deals happen to land in front of them - a fintech app one month, a consumer brand the next.EverQuest only invests in Deep MakeTech.
That means every investment committee discussion benefits from deep, repeated pattern-matching in one space - what good IP protection looks like in materials science, what a credible manufacturing scale-up plan actually requires, which technical risks are genuine red flags versus normal R&D friction.
That’s a different kind of investment discipline to a generalist manager assessing a new sector every quarter.
The best deals rarely reach the open market
Hardware and materials businesses are harder to originate than software startups - they don’t come out of accelerator demo days in batches. That’s exactly why the firms with genuine scientific and engineering origination networks see a different pipeline to everyone else.
Through our exclusive partnership with CPI (Centre for Process Innovation), EverQuest sees over 300 qualified, proprietary deals a year - opportunities that never reach the open market or a broker list.
If your EIS shortlist is built entirely from platforms and broker lists, you’re seeing the same companies as every other adviser in the market.
Many portfolio companies qualify as Knowledge-Intensive
A meaningful share of the underlying Deep MakeTech businesses we invest in qualify as Knowledge-Intensive companies in their own right. That’s relevant for clients: where capital is invested into qualifying KI companies, the annual EIS investment limit rises from £1 million to £2 million, and the company-age eligibility window extends further than for non-KI businesses. For clients with larger allowances to use, that’s a practical, not just thematic, reason to look at this segment.
Where EverQuest fits in
Deep MakeTech should not displace generalist EIS exposure simply because it is different.
The more useful question is whether it complements it - and on the evidence of the five points above, it does so precisely where a generalist allocation is thinnest.
EverQuest Capital Partners was built around that proposition: the only EIS strategy investing exclusively in advanced manufacturing, materials science and industrial technology at Seed and Series A, with proprietary origination and technical diligence through the CPI partnership.
Explore the EverQuest EIS Fund
Discover our investment strategy, portfolio and approach to investing in Deep MakeTech.
The EverQuest team recently joined Hardman & Co for the podcast "How to Invest Venture Capital into Manufacturing Effectively." You can listen to the episode below.