28 June 2010 Last updated at 03:09 ET

Kevin Surace, Serious Materials

Grow as fast as you can while your business is still privately-owned, says Kevin Surace

Serial entrepreneur Kevin Surace had a successful career running technology businesses, before founding Serious Materials almost "as a hobby".

Serious Materials

• Turnover: Not disclosed
• Number of employees: 325
• HQ location: Sunnyvale, California, USA
• Year founded: 2002
• Ownership: Privately-held

The company, which makes building materials and windows, is one of a new breed of "clean tech" firms appearing in California's Silicon Valley.

It recently won a contract to replace all the windows in the Empire State Building in New York.

Key advice

After you've launched your business, while you are still privately-owned, "what you have to do is grow very fast, so that some day when you have to really drop a lot of dollars to the bottom line, you've laid in a base that can still grow at maybe 10% or 20% a year.

"Five years into being a public company, you can never do that again."