Having bootstrapped for more than a year, Todd Thompson is preparing for a launch late this year of EventLift, an SaaS product that enhances contests by broadcasters or at events.

Based in the Halifax suburb of Hubley, N.S., EventLift simplifies the process of holding contests and allows the hosting organization to enhance its relationship with contestants. Thompson started the company last year as PhoneDJ to target contests on radio and TV, but broadened the scope of the product to include live events like concerts or sports events.

Thompson now works as head of marketing at the Steele Auto Group in Halifax and will decide how to proceed with EventLift after he launches the platform with a national radio chain, likely in December.

“By Christmas, I think I’ll have the traction part of it worked out,” he said in an interview.

Thompson got the idea for the startup in the summer of 2011 when he heard a local radio station running a contest, and he began to wonder whether radio stations capture data on people who phone into their contests.

He learned that callers often get busy signals when they phone contests, or the call rings incessantly, and the radio station has no record of who called. Writing his own code, he developed a platform that would administer the contest for the station so the caller gets a better experience and the host gets a stronger relationship with the caller.

The first iteration of PhoneDJ allowed the radio company to program a simple contest, selecting which number caller would be the winner and blocking people who call repeatedly. It captured the callers’ details, and asked all callers if they would like a text message the next time there was a contest.

By the autumn, he had a working product that he beta-tested with both radio and TV outlets. In October, it was used for a contest during a Halifax Mooseheads hockey game on Eastlink TV, in which the 25^th caller claimed the prize (a Mooseheads jersey) in just 11 seconds.

Thompson soon began to realize that there was a larger market that he was missing – live events. He broadened the scope of the platform, changing the name to EventLift and tailoring it for concerts and sports events. With this new application, event organizers can host a contest during a game or before the curtain lifts on a concert. Thompson says that, for example, there could be an announcement as the crowd waits for a concert to start that the 25^th caller will be able to move to front row seats.  Instantly people would pull out their cellphones and call the number, and they would all be invited to press a button if they wanted to be texted about upcoming events.

So far, Thompson has paid for the development of the company out of his own pocket, and he has no plans in the near term to seek outside funding.

“What I would like to do is wait until I’ve derisked it a bit with sales in Canada, and then push it into the U.S.,” he said. “That’s when I think I may need some investment.”