Seso – a workforce management platform for agriculture – announced the closing of a $26M Series B led by BOND with participation from Index Ventures, NFX, SV Angel, and other prominent investors. And several Seso customers also participated in the round.
The company will use the funding to expand its platform, including adding an AI-enabled payroll solution, a banking and remittance solution for farm workers, and a comprehensive HR platform purpose-built for agribusiness employers. Farmers everywhere will now have access to a comprehensive solution that will help them scale to meet seasonal demands and reduce their reliance on pencil and paper.
U.S. farms have faced a growing labor shortage for many years, so many are now turning to the H-2A visa to supplement their seasonal labor needs. This visa is uncapped, thus enabling farms to hire experienced overseas agricultural workers. This program provides migrant workers the opportunity to work on American farms and make as much as 20 times higher salaries than they would in their home countries.
But the H-2A program is exceedingly difficult to navigate, leading many farms to make mistakes in their visa applications – most farms report delayed arrivals for their H-2A workers. For an industry where timing is everything, a delayed harvest could devastate a farm’s bottom line. Seso streamlines applying to the H-2A visa program and digitizes the paperwork for workers and employers.
Seso also helps farmers nationwide use the latest software to manage their back-office workflows and HR documentation. And the platform provides all of the functionality a farmer needs to manage their workforce.
Since launching its platform in 2021, hundreds of farms, including 27 of the industry’s 100 largest employers, have adopted Seso as their labor management solution. Last year alone, the company signed up over 88,000 workers for seasonal jobs.
KEY QUOTES:
“Any farmer in America will tell you that the biggest risk to their business is labor. We are building the industry’s first digital system of record for farms to hire and manage a seasonal workforce while remaining compliant with government regulations.”
– Michael Guirguis, Seso’s Co-Founder and CEO
“Seso has a bold and thoughtful digital vision to help address the labor shortages that have plagued the nation’s agricultural industry for decades. We are excited to partner with Seso as they help farm workers succeed and provide a generational step forward in business software solutions for agriculture employers.”
– Mary Meeker, General Partner at BOND
“We are building the most comprehensive HR system ever created for agriculture while ensuring it’s simple and easy to use. Generative AI is going to make a 50-hour payroll reconciliation process take under 5 minutes and will remove the reliance on paper checks and manual data entry for the back-office team.”
– Jordan Taylor, the company’s Co-Founder and Head of Product
