OUR MISSION
Seso’s mission is to build the premier platform for agribusiness to hire and manage their workforce and improve the lives of agricultural workers.
There’s a saying in agriculture, “crop doesn’t wait.” When an apple is ready to drop from the tree, it’s going to drop whether the harvest crew is there to pick it or not. Every day, there are countless elements beyond a farm’s control: the price of product, the weather, a constantly changing regulatory environment, to name a few. Yet by far, the biggest challenge farmers face is finding and retaining a reliable workforce. Unfortunately, farms have lacked modern software to support them in hiring and managing a seasonal workforce — until now.
Our vision at Seso is simple: Modernize America’s food production system by empowering the people that grow our food. Seso provides farmers with modern workforce management tools, purpose-built for agribusiness. Whether it’s helping employers navigate the H-2A program, ensuring seasonal workers are hired and arrive on time, maintaining compliant records for government audits, or streamlining employee onboarding and payroll, Seso is the all-in-one labor solution for the modern farmer.
Why We Started Seso
Seso CEO, Michael Guirguis, on creating Seso.
My cousin, Marsha Habib, is a farmer in Hollister, California. Her farm, Oya Organics, is unique in many ways — it is owned by a young, female, minority farmer — Marsha is of Egyptian-Japanese descent and started the farm in her late 20s. It focuses on sustainability and small-batch farming; and it’s entirely organic. However, Oya deals with the same fundamental issue facing farms both small and large across America: access to labor. Each year, billions of dollars worth of crops rot in fields across the country because there is no labor to pick them. This is the biggest problem facing American farmers today.
I started Seso with my cofounder, Jordan Taylor (who grew up farming and was a product leader at Farmers’ Business Network) to address the labor shortage in agriculture and help farms like Marsha’s secure their food production. Seso is addressing the labor shortage by streamlining the H-2A visa, an uncapped visa for farmworkers that is meant to supplement domestic farm labor.
Despite having excellent produce, Oya struggles to make a profit. I spent Thanksgiving in 2018 with Marsha and her husband, Modesto, to go through their books and “get creative.” After a few hours it became obvious that the cost and availability of local labor prevented them from expanding. At one point, Modesto mentioned he wanted to try bringing in skilled workers from Mexico on a “farm visa.” He said farmworkers in Oaxaca treat this visa like gold, but he knew little about it except “it would be difficult and complicated to get.” This caught my attention and I started researching the visa the next day. I learned that the H-2A visa is a guest worker visa exclusively focused on farm labor, and that the program has grown more than 300% over the last decade. I started reaching out to farmers in Marsha’s community and learned that many farmers were too intimidated by the application process to participate. Similarly, many workers interested in earning U.S. wages, which are often 10 times higher than wages in their home countries, don’t know how to navigate the program or how to reach American farms who are desperately in need of their help.
“Farmers and ranchers in every state tell me that the shortage of labor is the greatest limiting factor on their farms. They try to hire American workers, but there are not many takers — and those who do take farm jobs often quit before the season is over.”
Zippy Duval, President, American Farm Bureau Federation
Economists and farmers alike believe H-2A is the future of farm labor in America. Although this program has bipartisan support in Congress, it still has many issues. Workers are often exploited by predatory labor recruiters who illegally charge workers to apply for an H-2A job, and employers often struggle to understand and comply with labor laws, which change frequently and can vary at the county, state, and federal level.
Our goal at Seso is to help secure America’s food production system by streamlining the H-2A program. We are helping farms better navigate the program, recruit H-2A workers, and comply with labor laws, while also helping farmworkers find safe and meaningful employment and keep more of their paycheck through financial services (using a banking card instead of going to a payday lender, for example). We are starting with a labor marketplace to address the biggest problem in agriculture, however, our long term goal is to be the “Gusto for Agriculture.”
“We’re pretty advanced in the fields these days with drones and sensor technology, but when it comes to the rest of farming, we’re still behind the times, doing everything manually. As an industry, we’re in need of a change.”
Mike Saqui, Seso Advisor, Labor Compliance Attorney
Seso is one of the largest H-2A providers in the U.S., with over 88,000 workers signed up through Seso in 2023. We support farms across the country, from the largest lettuce, berry and avocado producers in the country, to one of the oldest vineyards in the Napa Valley, to a small bee farmer in North Dakota. On a personal note, I’m most proud of the impact we will have on Oya Organics, which is thriving thanks to a reliable H-2A labor force.
Seso is backed by some of the best investors in Silicon Valley including Index Ventures, Founders Fund, and NfX. If you’re interested in improving the lives of farm workers and securing America’s food production system please reach out at hello@sesolabor.com or check out our available positions!
Michael Guirguis, CEO of Seso
Our Leadership Team
OUR INVESTORS
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