Deep Tech Sector Mapping: Structuring a Wide Mandate into Investable Sub-Sectors
Took a broad deep tech mandate, mapped funding activity across sub-sectors, and delivered a prioritized view of where investment opportunity was concentrated.
Aditya Sharma
Investment Associate at ValleyNXT Ventures (FKA Ivy League Ventures)
From their time as
Investment Associate
ValleyNXT Ventures • 2024
Overview
Aditya received a mandate from his partner to identify investment opportunities in deep tech. The brief was intentionally wide: deep tech as a category spans semiconductors, cybersecurity, space, defense, biosciences, and more, and the partner had not specified which sub-sectors to prioritize.
The Story
Aditya received a mandate from his partner to identify investment opportunities in deep tech. The brief was intentionally wide: deep tech as a category spans semiconductors, cybersecurity, space, defense, biosciences, and more, and the partner had not specified which sub-sectors to prioritize.
He started by breaking the category into specific sub-sectors and mapping funding activity across each. He tracked funding trends over multiple time periods, profiling individual companies and sorting them into sub-sectoral buckets. He also tracked government capital flows and mapped which sub-sectors were receiving the largest share of grants and subsidies.
The output was a prioritized view of the deep tech landscape: the top sub-sectors with the highest deal flow and government backing, and those where investment activity was limited. This gave the partner a structured starting point for where to focus sourcing efforts, rather than a raw list of companies.
The research combined three signals: private funding patterns, government capital allocation, and the profile of which startups were getting funded versus which were not. Together, these gave a clear picture of where the market was concentrating.