From 45th to 3rd: Inside SESO’s Strategy for Scaling in a Traditional Industry

Most startups enter traditional industries with an aggressive growth strategy. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Michael Guirguis revealed how SESO took a more deliberate path to become the third-largest H-2A visa platform in agriculture.

Starting with the Right Problem

SESO’s rapid ascent began with a crucial insight: the agricultural labor shortage wasn’t going away anytime soon. “Basically, we have two to 3 million ag workers in the US. There’s a demand for at least another half a million,” Michael explains. “And every year, more and more of these ag workers leave the industry, whether it’s because they’re retiring or they go into another industry that is less physically taxing.”

This gap created an opportunity for the H-2A visa program, which has grown from approximately 250,000 workers to 380,000 workers during SESO’s existence. But opportunity alone doesn’t explain their growth trajectory.

Building Trust Before Scale

Instead of pursuing rapid growth, SESO invested heavily in understanding their market. “I spent a ton of time early on just driving and flying to farms all over the country. I’ve visited hundreds of farms in the last few years,” Michael shares. This extensive fieldwork revealed that farmers needed more than just software – they needed a trusted partner who understood their regulatory environment.

This insight shaped their growth strategy. Rather than trying to serve everyone, SESO carefully selected customers who shared their values. “We’re not just going to say yes to every farm if we don’t think that we have the same values aligned,” Michael emphasizes.

Focusing on the Core Problem

While exploring the agricultural market, Michael discovered multiple opportunities. “AG has so much opportunity for improvement. It’s such a laggard industry in a lot of ways that there’s a lot of different things we could have jumped into early on, whether that’s accounting or bi tools.”

But rather than diversifying, SESO maintained strict focus on labor management. “We’re staying in our lane and we’re really just maniacally focused on everything related to labor,” Michael explains. This focus allowed them to build deeper expertise and stronger customer relationships.

The Enterprise Strategy

A key element of SESO’s growth has been their ability to serve both large and small agricultural operations. Today, they work with “22 of the 100 largest employers in AG” while maintaining support for farms bringing in just one or two workers.

This hybrid approach required building a product that could scale from small family farms to major agricultural corporations. “A lot of the farms that we bring in, that we work with are just bringing in one or two workers and then we have farms that are bringing in 5000 plus workers,” Michael notes. “And it’s really important to us to support not just enterprise farms and enterprise employers, but also some of the mom and pop farms that helped us get our first start.”

Building the Right Team

Michael attributes much of their success to key hiring decisions. “Getting Julie Harris, who came out of Flexport, who’s total badass and just such a professional, so good at her job. Getting her on board was also a really big one,” he shares.

Future Growth Strategy

Looking ahead, SESO sees opportunities to expand their model beyond agriculture. “We see a lot of these same problems in other industries, in landscaping and forestry, fisheries, truck drivers, construction,” Michael explains. “They all have labor shortages. They all have kind of pain points related to not only bringing in labor on visas, but then also being compliant in how you do payroll and manage the different regulations.”

For B2B founders entering traditional industries, SESO’s growth trajectory offers valuable lessons:

1. Build deep market understanding before pursuing aggressive growth
2. Focus on solving one problem extremely well rather than diversifying too early
3. Build a product that can serve both small and large customers
4. Select customers based on value alignment rather than just growth potential
5. Hire key leaders who bring relevant industry expertise

The key insight? Sometimes the path to rapid growth paradoxically requires moving more slowly at first, building trust and expertise before pursuing scale.