About Shearwater
Shearwater Data was founded by several early Looker employees.
I joined Looker back in 2013 as one of the first members of the Sales team. I’m proud to have helped shape Looker’s pricing strategy and expand the Looker platform to enterprise companies over a period of more than 7 years.
My personal friend and business partner, Andrew Searson was also an early employee at Looker (later acquired by Google) and served as Head of Looker Sales Analytics at Google Cloud. Prior to that, he led Consumer Seller Analytics at eBay and worked as a Senior Analyst in Tracking and Attribution Management. He holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Andrew’s expertise spans business analysis, data visualization, data governance, data architecture, and SaaS. Known for his analytical depth, innovative thinking, and ability to quickly grasp complex business processes, Andrew is a valuable asset for organizations seeking to drive data-based decisions and strengthen their data infrastructure
We've assisted hundreds of companies with their data and analytics challenges over 15 years. That’s why we deeply understand how critical the enablement and support strategy was in helping companies unlock the full potential of Looker.
Our Perspective on What Great Looker Support Should Look Like
Over the past 10+ years, we’ve gained a deep and unique understanding of Looker best practices and we know what it takes to empower the primary Looker developer inside each organization (or the fox, as we used to say internally).
We help teams navigate questions like:
- What’s the best way to model this data?
- How can I combine Looker with dbt efficiently?
- What’s the right way to structure this Explore?
- How can we build custom dashboards that really meet our clients’ needs?
Not only do we have the technical expertise to answer these questions, we know how to deliver support in a way that makes your team feel like we’re part of it - true partners.
That’s how we operated in Looker’s early days, especially through the Department of Customer Love , a concept actually inspired by a personal story from Lloyd Tabb in Brazil.
Setting high standards for interactions makes a difference. Looker customers love our support data analysts, and our support data analysts love the way they’re treated.
Lloyd Tabb, Looker Founder
At Shearwater, we carry this same human-first philosophy into our Looker support. We’re not just Looker experts, our support team genuinely care about our clients.
The Current State of Official Looker Support (Google Cloud)
As official Google partners and former Google employees, we spent years working within the GCP ecosystem. We’ve seen firsthand how Looker’s support model shifted as part of its integration into the broader Google Cloud Platform.
This transition led to a noticeable gap in deep Looker expertise and the support experience became far less personal and accessible.
In many cases, users are limited to email ticketing systems, often facing long wait times and repetitive back-and-forth exchanges. They can't access actual technical support.
We also recognize that for many Looker customers, even basic support (let alone premium tiers) is either hard to access or cost-prohibitive — sometimes costing more than the Looker license itself, especially when tied to a percentage of your total GCP spend.
How Shearwater Bridges That Gap
We believe there’s a better way: give customers direct access to excellent support via chat for everything from quick questions to complex modeling needs in your looker instance, just like the good old days.
Support is provided via Slack, Microsoft Teams, or an embeddable chat tool of your choice. We also offer live support through video calls and screen sharing.
You’ll be able to reach a Looker expert, talk through any problem in depth, and get immediate help, whether it’s fixing something, confirming your approach, or offering best practices.
We’re excited to offer a subscription-based support model with clearly defined S1–S4 SLAs, at a reasonable price.
Most small and mid-sized companies can opt for flexible month-to-month plans, and our relationships are built on customer satisfaction. If you feel like you’re getting great value and support, we believe you’ll stick with us.
We’re already supporting companies of all sizes — including Bloomberg, Netflix and Tops in Thailand.
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Our Looker Experts Can Help You With:
- LookML development
- Model optimization
- Content and dashboard optimization
- Looker Embed support
- Looker Studio, Looker Studio Pro, and Gemini for Looker navigation
We also offer upstream support for BigQuery or any other analytical database you’re using
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By providing Looker Support, we bring the technical expertise and the right attitude to help your team move faster and succeed with data. If you need it, please don't hesitate to reach out, it will be a pleasure to support you.
