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Conclusion
The Pure business model, and by that I effectively mean the freeloader.com business model was
always a high risk model that relied on sustained, strong growth in user figures and advertising revenues. The Company defied the odds in the UK by achieving both high click-through rates (up to 17%) and exceptional
advertising revenue growth (up to around £150k in early 2001), a feat it singularly failed to replicate overseas. However, the Company had also built up a vast infrastructure and the resulting high cash burn
rate made continued strong revenue growth absolutely critical. With the business on such a knife-edge, it did not take much to put the Company's prospects in jeopardy.
In retrospect, it, perhaps, is questionable
whether such a large infrastructure was actually needed for freeloader.com and certainly the support Pure gave its game development teams until the end of 2000 was ill-advised, especially given the lack of historic
success Pure's internally developed titles had achieved. It might even be argued that had the Company streamlined at an earlier stage, focused on freeloader.com and had more time to address its international sales
problems, the venture could have worked.
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