Kirkland North
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Kirkland North, a Y Combinator Winter 2008 startup founded by Yale student Gabe Smedresman with Andrew Fong and Matt O'Brien, built Turf (PlayTurf): a Risk-like campus game in which sections of a university battled for territorial domination, later offered to institutions as custom per-campus versions.
02 / Kirkland North FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors supported by the current evidence
Virality never became a business. Turf drew heavy play at Yale and Harvard, but the plan to license custom versions to universities never produced a sustainable revenue base, and post-YC traction stalled. Y Combinator now lists the company as inactive — a case of distribution without monetization.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Kirkland North is founded and joins Y Combinator's Winter 2008 batch with the Turf campus game.
- Funding round
The company raises a $225,000 seed round led by Harrison Metal Capital to develop PlayTurf.net.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
A campus game a quarter of Yale played
- 02
$225K seed to license Turf to universities
- 03
Virality without a revenue model
- 04
Wound down; YC lists it inactive