Seso began by automating the H-2A visa process to help farms hire migrant workers and has expanded toward an end-to-end HR operating system for agriculture. The product automates compliance-heavy tasks and can ingest handwritten timesheets and apply AI to validate accuracy. The company emphasizes selling back-office tools rather than changing field farming processes, which it says has helped adoption among conservative farm customers. Seso plans to expand into payroll automation next, addressing complex crop-by-crop and worker-type pay rules. The startup doubled its customer base in 2023 and serves 27 of the largest 100 U.S. agriculture employers. The team was founded five years ago by Michael Guirguis, who built the company after seeing farms’ extensive manual record-keeping and labor challenges. Seso builds an end-to-end recruiting and workforce management platform for the agriculture industry, automating H-2A visa workflows and offering compliance, applicant tracking, and workforce management tools. The product gives farms access to a database of thousands of H-2A workers, helps with recruitment, communication, and digitizes workforce records to reduce paperwork and maintain labor compliance. Since launching in 2021, Seso has signed 80+ customers, including seven of the largest 20 employers in the industry, and claims it can save farms up to 24% per worker. The company positions itself as addressing a national agricultural labor shortage by simplifying the fragmented H-2A process and reducing harvest losses caused by labor gaps. Future plans include building additional HR software and financial services to expand workers' access to the financial system and capture a stated $14.8 billion market opportunity. Seso emphasizes social impact by aiming to improve worker outcomes while helping U.S. food production remain local and more efficient. SESO Labor is a California startup that streamlines and manages the H-2A visa process to help farms bring migrant agricultural workers into the U.S. with legal protections. The company automates paperwork and smooths applications for employers, charging about $1,000 per worker. As of the article SESO is pre-revenue but expects to bring in 1,000 workers over 2021 and is working with 12 farms while negotiating contracts with another 46. Founders include Mike Guirguis and Jordan Taylor, the latter previously the first product hire at Farmer’s Business Network and formerly of Dropbox. SESO plans to expand beyond visa processing into services for workers (remittance and banking) and integrated HR/payroll-style tools for farm owners, with the ultimate aim of being “Gusto for agriculture.” The company is positioning itself to capture market share from larger incumbents that currently bring in about 6,000 workers per year, operating within the existing H-2A regulatory framework.

Total raised

$56M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Apr 2024