Sherry Colbourne

Informed Consumption

How do we teach our young adult children to become responsible social drinkers?

In 2002, as a single mom with two teenage children, I was mindful of this concern. So much so, that I decided to learn everything I could about social drinking. What I discovered during my two years of research was that there was a whole industry of scientists, researchers, enforcement and legal stakeholders focused on studying this same challenge! What I also discovered was that there was no one - outside of lobby groups that tell people not to drink at all – tackling the issue.

I started to talk about this issue to people within my business and social networks. What I found was an interesting divergence of opinion...some didn’t care and were sure they knew how to manage their consumption and some cared a lot. One such person was my colleague, Chris Montag. Chris liked the idea of doing something good for society.

Relying on our many years in the high tech sector, we called on our network and developed both a business plan and a strategy for getting the various stakeholders to work with us. In time, we gathered a renowned team of supporters. Next, we shopped our plan to an investor and Ladybug Teknologies was born.

Ladybug Teknologies develops and sells products that are designed to educate the social drinker about drinking and the impacts of consumption in real time...while they drink. The idea behind our company is very simple – we want every social drinker to self-manage and become an informed and consciously responsible drinker. In the five years since we established the company, we have created innovative tools that allow social drinkers to keep track of what they’re drinking and calculate their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) in real time.

Our biggest challenge to date has been overcoming the stigma associated with drinking. If you are a social drinker or know a social drinker, you will know that none of us believe that our social drinking is a problem. The reality is that unless you were born with an “alcostat” in your brain, no one knows with certainty what their blood alcohol level is when they drink. The technology of the 21st century allows Ladybug to bring those tools to the table.

What has surprised us most about running our own business is facing the realization that our personal connection to the business sometimes detracts from our ability to make objective business decisions. There has been a persistent need to calibrate our passion with objectivity for the benefit of the company. Being in a partnership has greatly helped us manage this as, more often than not, it takes a healthy round of discussions to find the optimal solution.