After hitting a bar or two, it’s easy to forget how many drinks you’ve knocked back. Getting an accurate read on your blood alcohol concentration is imperative before you operate heavy machinery or get behind the wheel.
This is where Alcohoot steps in. The smart phone breathalyzer tracks how many drinks you’ve consumed and displays an estimate of your BAC to determine whether or not you’re legally intoxicated.
While serving in the Israel Defense Forces a few years ago, Ben Biron and his friend Jonathan Ofir learned that more soldiers are killed in car accidents than in combat, with many of those accidents were alcohol-related. Soon after, Biron, the co-founder of Alcohoot, moved to the U.S. to start classes at Wingate University and he was startled how prevalent the drinking and party scene were at his college campus. Biron and his other co-founder Ofir put their plan into action and created the world’s first smartphone-powered breathalyzer.
We recently sat down with Biron in New York City for this Member Spotlight series – a series that showcases the individuals behind small businesses and startups. Here’s what he shared:
My friend Jonathan and I were serving in the military together and we saw that a lot of people were dying from drunk driving. Our base had a board on the wall that showed how many people died from drunk driving every day and it continued to increase. One that really struck out to me was when they posted our commander who was the head of the safety department at that time. In Israel, it’s pretty common to hear about alcohol-related accidents, so we knew we wanted to tackle this problem somehow.
Our initial vision for Alcohoot was to make something that’s better than what is out there and to make some money in the process. We started picking up on sales and sold off most of our units. Currently, we’re in the process of focusing on the lifestyle portion of our product. We want to tell the story of Alcohoot and let it become a part of someone’s lifestyle – the same way they pick up their wallet, keys, and phone before they leave their home.
We’re making this accessible to consumers. To set ourselves apart from others, we created a high-quality professional grade breathalyzer. The others that are sold to consumers are very low-quality. There are two different sensors that consumer breathalyzers have that are not accurate at all. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are police breathalyzers that cost around $200.
The one thing I wish I could go back and change is how long we waited for the product to be perfect in our eyes. We should have just run with it. Today with crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, people post their projects online with videos and graphics and raise $10 million. We were just waiting for our product to be great before we were comfortable selling it. I think that’s something that helped competitors get into the space, and if we had done it earlier, we could have set our company up earlier.
There’s a mentor who always tells me that I won’t learn from experience by being inexperienced. Every time something bad happens, I’m always able to learn something new. He’s a family friend who’s also from Israel and started his own company in the U.S. We both had similar experiences, so we’re able to relate.
YouTube.com is usually my default when I need some inspiration. I enjoy watching videos of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Why? Were you expecting me to say books?
