5 reasons advisers are looking beyond generalist EIS for Deep MakeTech

For years, EIS deal flow has skewed heavily toward software, fintech, and consumer brands. They’re easy to understand, easy to pitch, and easy to find. But a growing number of advisers are asking a harder question: where’s the EIS exposure that isn’t just another SaaS roll-up competing for the same capital and the same exits?

The answer increasingly points toward Deep MakeTech - advanced manufacturing, materials science, and industrial technology. Here’s why it’s earning a place on more client recommendation lists.

1. It’s genuinely underfunded - not just underexposed
   Deep MakeTech doesn’t carry the brand recognition of “deep tech” broadly, but it’s one of the fastest-growing and most historically underfunded segments within it. Capital has chased software because software is capital-light and fast to scale. Manufacturing and materials businesses need more upfront investment and longer runways - which means less competition for the best deals, not less opportunity.

   
   

2. 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.

   
   

3. 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 underwriting discipline to a generalist manager assessing a new sector every quarter.

   
   

4. 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.

   
   

5. 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

   EverQuest Capital Partners runs an EIS fund built specifically around the Deep MakeTech thesis, with exclusive origination and diligence access through our partnership with CPI - sourcing over 300 qualified, proprietary deals a year that most EIS managers never see. It means the deals in front of our investment committee aren’t the deals every other EIS manager has already passed on.

   
   If you’d like to see how Deep MakeTech could fit into a client’s EIS allocation, speak to the EverQuest team or request the latest Fund II factsheet.

   
   

   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.