RavenBrick, maker of alternative window products that react and adapt to heat and sunlight, closed a $5 million investment in September from an affiliate of
Boulder's Aravaipa Venture Fund. The company's flagship product, RavenWindow, reflects sunlight when it's hot and remains transparent when it's not, making for as much as 30 percent savings on heating and air-conditioning.
“The whole point of raising that money was to pair it with money we got from the
Governor's Energy Office and the city of Denver,” says Chris Ketchum, the company's VP of sales. The latter funding amounted to $2 million but came with the provision the company set up in a Denver Enterprise Zone. Ketchum says the facility will likely be in the Stapleton area.
Production is slated to start on a limited basis in May 2013 and expand after a three-month pilot.
“In the end, we'll be producing 100,000 square feet of material a month," he says.
Founded in 2006, RavenBrick currently employs 10 people in Denver and five elsewhere, but those numbers are slated to go up in 2013. Ketchum says the company will hire “under 10 initially” at its new facility, but “down the road 30, 40, 50 – we honestly don't know.”
The company currently has panels installed at the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
“We've been getting nothing but positive feedback from people who work there,” Ketchum says, touting a four-year payback time on a RavenWindow investment. Citing a 30-year product lifespan, he adds, “you get 26 years of free energy savings after that.”
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