Serious Materials Featured in Fortune Magazine
June 8, 2009
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Got a bright idea? There’s $787 billion in stimulus money up for grabs. These business-people are thriving not despite the climate, but because of it.

Serious Materials:
While the door has closed on the housing boom, the government has opened a super-energy-efficient window. The idea: By offering tax credits to retrofit homes, schools, and government buildings with new windows, heating and cooling costs can be reduced by as much as 50%. That’s been a boon for Serious Materials, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and founded by techies in 2002 with the Moore’s Law approach of bringing huge and continual improvement to the hidebound world of building materials. After conquering drywall, the company moved on to windows and this year alone snapped up two bankrupt window factories (including one in Chicago where workers hoping to save their jobs staged a sit-in). Result: Serious has increased capacity 10-fold for its energy-efficient windows while generating hundreds of the green jobs that President Obama is so keen on. “When you add the money for retrofitting schools, there is $60 billion out there that we can go after,” says Serious CEO Kevin Surace. Though Serious now has revenues of $50 million a year, “we’re getting close on individual projects that are $40 million to $50 million,” Surace says.