A Financial Argument for Deep Tech | by Ian | Cantos Ventures | Medium

I’m going to make some claims about “deep tech” so let’s start off by acknowledging that term is fairly subjective. Here’s how we define it at Cantos: Deep tech = Predominantly taking technical risk (rather than market risk) [While there are some instances where this is true for purely software endeavors, our focus at Cantos requires some proprietary hardware or biological component.] There is a reasonable tendency to consider these startups riskier than their market risk-centric counterparts due to the often esoteric technologies being developed. It’s the assumption I made when I started Cantos after leaving SoFi, where I had begun making small angel investments on the side. I was almost exclusively investing in world-positive software startups from 2012 through 2016 despite being a sci-fi nut obsessed with imagining a future that could be. I avoided hardware and biology startups because all the smart VCs I looked up to said things like “hardware is hard” and “we don’t take FDA risk”.

I’m going to make some claims about “deep tech” so let’s start off by acknowledging that term is fairly subjective. Here’s how we define it at Cantos: Deep tech = Predominantly taking technical risk (rather than market risk) [While there are some instances where this is true for purely software endeavors, our focus at Cantos requires some proprietary hardware or biological component.] There is a reasonable tendency to consider these startups riskier than their market risk-centric counterparts due to the often esoteric technologies being developed. It’s the assumption I made when I started Cant