My Story

The idea for Permission Click started over a kitchen table discussion about the challenges a physical education teacher (and wife of one of the co-founders) was having chasing parents for her students’ permission slips. It was proving unnecessarily tiresome. Her husband, Scott Macaulay, came up with the idea of building an application to simplify the task. As an entrepreneurial lecturer at Red River College, he took the idea to an idea generating event ‘Ramp Up Weekend’ where Chris Johnson – a technology and software developer with sales and business planning experience – and Kevin Buckner – a Chartered Accountant who specializes in start-up accounting – took notice.

Once their partnership was formed, taking the idea to the next stage of development took a great deal of time, commitment, and research. “It’s all about creating something that can be built once, but used by many,” said Chris Johnson. “We spent a lot of time upfront focused on product fit and ensuring it was fully vetted by interviewing over 70 teachers, principals, administrators, and parents to understand what they needed and what would actually be used.”

The team tips their hats to the entrepreneurial spirit of the Winnipeg community as a great boost to their success. Johnson said, “It’s an amazing community of support. ‘Startup Winnipeg’, ‘Ramp Up Manitoba’ and, of course, a strong Futurpreneur Canada presence, along with several accelerators, and great government tax credits make it a great place to start a business.”

To date, a number of schools and districts (representing thousands of parent users and permission forms) are using the product.