Crops don’t wait. American agriculture has faced a labor shortage for decades. This has led to the loss of $3.1 billion in food.
According to the USDA, farm labor employment has declined by 75% over the past seventy years. Migrant workers make up the majority agricultural labor force. Recent years have seen fewer immigrants to the U.S., and those migrating must go through the H-2A program. This is a complicated process that can be fraught with inefficiencies.
Jordan Taylor and Michael Guirguis, cofounders, set out to solve this problem with Seso. This startup connects workers in need of farmers and workers who are looking for work.
“Farmers want farms. Guirguis says that they are not good at paperwork. His startup digitizes agricultural recruitment and payroll processes. Most of this work is still done on paper.
Seso offers farmers visa automation for migrant laborers, government regulatory compliance, and an employee database. It also provides management tools to simplify an administrative documentation process that is often complicated. In 2021, 5,500 agricultural workers were issued H-2A visas by the startup.
So announced Thursday that it raised $25m in a Series B round with Index Ventures. K5 Ventures, Founders Fund, and NFX participated. This was almost a year since the labor market launched.
The company was founded in 2019 and had 35 employees. It also serves 77 customers, including some giant farms in the country. Farmers use the startup’s technology to manage and recruit migrant workers across many industries, including South African ostrich farmers, Utah sheepherders, and North Dakota bee farmers.
H-2A workers have been brought in by intermediaries, who farmers have relied upon for years. Inefficient visa applications have led to late arrivals and billions of dollars in wasted crops. Gurguis states that the program requires you to collaborate with at least four to five government agencies. It is so complex that it was never intended to be successful. It’s a broken system.
B.T. B.T. Seso also has Mexican employees. It helps to arrange transport for migrants to reach the consulate safely. This has resulted in a 70% reduction in the HR department’s workload.
Alex Munoz (director of human resources at B.T.) says that “the logistics of finding workers was a major hurdle that we had to overtake every year.” Loftus. Loftus.
The 32-year-old CEO built a portal to manage the workforce for the agricultural sector. Prior to that, he worked as a White House economist on the National Economic Council. He was responsible for developing housing and employment policies. Gurguis’ parents are Egyptian, and he graduated from Stanford University in 2011. He studied economics and labor policy. “I realized that I didn’t want the role of policymaker. I wanted to use technology to create new jobs. Because that was my passion, I knew I would start a labor market startup one day.
Juan Ramos is a H-2A guest worker visa holder and picks oranges in Arcadia, Florida, for Sorrells Brothers Packing Co. Inc. In the last 15 years, H-2A applications have increased fivefold, from 48,000 in 2005 to more than 275,000 in 2020.
Elizabeth Ortiz Zarate, a 28-year-old Mexican migrant worker, works at Bonnie Plants, Utica, New York. The H-2A visa is the country’s only uncapped visa. American farmers can use the H-2A program to hire seasonal workers from other nations for up to ten months after proving that they cannot find domestic labor.
Zarate was an industrial engineer in Mexico and earned $450 per month. She can earn approximately $3000 per month working as a seasonal worker. Her grandparents receive most of her income. Zarate states that H-2A allows immigrants to enter the country without going through the dangerous illegal immigration process. This can lead to extortion. It enables you to make a decent wage and acquire new skills.
Seso charges farmers approximately $5,000 for compliance software fees and application fees. However, the rate can differs depending on the services the farmer uses. Guirguis reports to Forbes that the company had a turnover of $3 million in 2021.
Seso has earned so much trust in agriculture that their customers look to them to automate more of their workflows, says Nina Achadjian (a partner at Index Ventures).
One of the most vulnerable groups, migrants, are mainly unbanked, and must be paid with checks. The startup will embed financial and payroll functions in its technology with the new funding. This will allow workers to not lose 10% of their wages due to remittance fees.
