A key observation about the "deep tech" benchmarks versus all the other categories of startup is that they are fundamentally subjective. To make that situation worse, there is frequently a dearth of qualified outside expertise that an investor can lean on to evaluate the startup. This makes deep tech a very different kind of fundraising process than the other types of startups.

Tangential to that, it is nearly impossible to raise money as a deep tech company in software specifically. Some of the reasoning is valid (where will the revenue come from?) but it also greatly stunts development of novel and advanced capabilities in software that require substantial investment.