About
We've made payroll for a hundred people.
Robby Switzer and Daniel Stafford both grew up working in Alaska, commercial fishing and construction. Shopanova took its name in 2016, though the company predates it. Over eleven years it has worked with more than 600 business owners, generated over $720 million in client revenue, employed over 100 people across its history, and got written up in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance.
Somewhere in that stretch, AI stopped being interesting and started being useful. Not as a topic. As a tool used every day, across the whole company: operations, training, knowledge management, internal tooling, client work, and marketing.
Breakwater came out of watching what happened next. Every company started announcing AI initiatives. Almost none of them could point to a number that moved. The gap wasn't technology. It was that nobody was doing the unglamorous part: finding where a specific business actually loses time, and building something that fixes it.
That's the whole company.
Who you'd be working with
Robby Switzer
Co-founder, technical lead
Robby co-founded Shopanova and leads the technical side, which is how he ended up hands-on with AI early, as a daily tool rather than a talking point. Before that he fished commercially and worked construction in Alaska.
He lives in Alaska with his wife and five kids, and spends his off time outdoors across the state.
Daniel Stafford
Co-founder, engagement lead
Daniel co-founded and runs Shopanova alongside Robby. He came up the same way, commercial fishing and construction in Alaska, before spending eleven years helping business owners grow.
He lives in Alaska with his three kids.
How we work
Everything is remote. Sessions are recorded and transcribed, so nothing gets lost between the conversation and the build, and your team can go back to the recording instead of relying on somebody's notes.
Every engagement is fixed scope and fixed price. You'll know what it costs before it starts, and we'll tell you on the first call which one fits.
On the name
A breakwater doesn't stop the ocean. It makes a stretch of water calm enough to work in.
That seemed like the right thing to name this. We're not promising to remake your company. We're promising the part of your operation we touch will be calmer and cost you less of your week.
What we won't do
- We won't sell you a tool and call the job done.
- We won't pitch headcount reduction. The work that comes off is the work that never needed a person.
- We won't take work we're not set up for. Heavily regulated healthcare data and ITAR controlled work aren't something we're ready for yet, and we'd rather say so on the first call.
- We won't tell you AI will help when it won't. Sometimes the honest answer is not yet, and that's worth as much as the other one.
Tell us what's slow.
If something in your operation eats more of the week than it should, that's the conversation.
Book a fit call