Basecomp: a platform to run prize competitions end to end.
I was the lead developer for the backend and administrative dashboard. The engagement was purely backend-focused, covering the systems and workflows behind the competition platform.
Replace the patchwork.
Competition businesses often juggle ticket sales, payments, entrants and draws across tools that do not talk to each other. Basecomp set out to put the whole operation into one platform.
Create competitions and ticket tiers.
Handle entries and payments reliably.
Transparent and auditable winner selection.
Commerce logic under pressure.
Competition & ticketing
Competition creation, ticket tiers, entries and merchant management workflows.
Payments
Reliable payment paths built around Stripe and the needs of high-demand closing windows.
Entrants & orders
Centralised operational views for managing customers, entries and orders.
Draw logic
Winner-selection workflows designed to be transparent, understandable and auditable.
Architecture for spiky traffic.
Popular competitions can create thousands of buyers in the final minutes before a draw closes. The platform uses a multi-tenant Laravel architecture, a payment path designed for reliability under load and AWS infrastructure that can scale for peaks.
When trust is the product, architecture matters.
Basecomp reinforced the importance of a rock-solid payment path and transparent business logic when the platform's core promise depends on fairness.