Tag Archives: kickstarter

Sock Series #2: Flyte Socks

I don’t remember where I heard about Flyte Socks for the first time. But it was before they were actually selling socks online. Two things caught my attention.

First, they are a Toronto-based start-up. And as Toronto is my home I was naturally attracted to them. Second, they were going to launch on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter? For socks. Well, ok I guess. And as they began to the process of launching two more things stood out to me as compelling: The material they chose to use was going to be bamboo. This has made the socks both light (comfortable as heck!) and durable (no holes after wearing them – so far!).

Second, the socks didn’t come in pairs. They came in threes. A socks threesome! Why? Because everyone has lost a sock. Or two. Or, in my case, lots.

Our tagline, Feel the difference is not only an insinuation to the softness of our socks, but also is a reference to the confidence we know our socks will instill to the people who wear them.

Own the room in your next company meeting and stand out at parties.  Whatever the occasion, our bright, colorful and bold socks are designed to turn heads.

My new Markhor shoes

Kickstarter (and Indiegogo) is one of my favourite websites. I’ve had the honour (and excitement!) of funding a number of projects. I’ve funded everything from the Pebble Time to Neil Young’s Pono music player. However, there is one project that I was really excited to fund: Markhor.

The story of Markhor goes something like this: a group of Pakistani entrepreneurs wanted to design and craft local shoes. They turned to Kickstarter to raise funds so that they would be able to raise enough money to source local materials and hire local designers and shoemakers to make shoes. You can visit Markhor for the longer version.

Well, my shoes came! And I’m so excited to show them to you. And wear them!

Markhor | #WearMarkhor

 

Markhor | #WearMarkhor

 

Markhor | #WearMarkhor

 

Markhor | #WearMarkhor

Kickstarter Security Breach

Kickstarter Hacked!
Kickstarter Hacked!

One of the world’s most popular crowdfunding sites recently experienced a security breach. Kickstarter announced late yesterday that hackers had gained access to important and private customer data.

While no credit card information was obtained by this unauthorized access, Kickstarter did admit that various other pieces of information were accessed by these hackers.

Here’s the press release that Kickstarter emailed out:

On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers’ data. Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.

No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on your account.

While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.

As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you change the password of your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password.

To change your password, log in to your account at Kickstarter.com and look for the banner at the top of the page to create a new, secure password. We recommend you do the same on other sites where you use this password. For additional help with password security, we recommend tools like 1Password and LastPass.

We’re incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come. We are working closely with law enforcement, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.

Kickstarter is a vibrant community like no other, and we can’t thank you enough for being a part of it. Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. You can reach us at accountsecurity@kickstarter.com.

Thank you,

Yancey Strickler

Kickstarter CEO