Traba, a leading marketplace for light industrial staffing, has raised $22 million in a funding round led by Founders Fund. The investment marks a significant valuation increase from last year and includes participation from returning investor Khosla Ventures. Traba aims to use the funds to expand its platform features and enter new markets. The company has seen rapid growth and customer adoption since its launch in 2021, serving tens of thousands of workers and hundreds of businesses across various industries.



MIAMI, Oct. 26, 2023 Traba, the leading marketplace platform for light industrial staffing, announced a $22M funding round led by Founders Fund, with a sizable increase in valuation from last year. The funding, which includes participation from returning investor Khosla Ventures, comes at a time of extremely strong growth and customer adoption for the company. Launched in 2021, Traba is already serving tens of thousands of workers and hundreds of businesses in distribution centers, warehouses, food processing facilities, manufacturers, and similar spaces across the country.

“Traba is poised for extraordinary success. The company has quadrupled their revenue over the past year and is still accelerating growth every quarter,” said Keith Rabois, General Partner at Founders Fund. “We almost never see companies sustain this speed of customer adoption while simultaneously expanding contribution margins. The high performance culture of Traba is equally rare and tracks the iconic companies at our roots. As a result, Founders Fund is thrilled to kick off FF8 with a signature investment in Traba.”

The company will use the funds to accelerate its expansion into new regions and add more product features to its marketplace platform that connects light industrial businesses looking for temporary staffing with workers who want to pick up shifts. Using machine learning, third-party data integrations, artificial intelligence robo-calling, and granular role attributes, Traba streamlines backend processes and algorithmically matches workers with their ideal shifts. With features like instant pay, work history, reliability ratings, company reviews, and preferential restaffing, Traba creates a better experience for workers and businesses. There’s also a lot more they have up their sleeves.

Despite approximately 14,000 temporary staffing companies operating in the U.S. alone, the light industrial market struggles with fill rates due to a reliance on outdated and inefficient processes like paper timesheets and archaic job posting boards. As a result, warehouses and distribution centers often have to take unnecessary risks to ensure adequate staffing, like requesting double the number of workers they need, to account for abysmal fill rates and long lead times. The industry average fill rate is only 46%, and it takes approximately seven days to complete each request. Traba, by contrast, has a 99% fill rate with an average time-to-fill of less than one day.

Using Traba, businesses can make staffing requests in near real-time with the confidence that they’ll get exactly the number of well-qualified workers they need. For workers, having an ongoing record of their job history, reliability, and on-time rating allows the best candidates to rise to the top of the list for the best shifts and wages. Additionally, the average pay on Traba is higher than minimum wage, enabled by the increased efficiency of the platform.

“Our mission at Traba is to empower both businesses and workers to reach their full productivity and potential, which is why we’re excited to accelerate our growth with this new funding,” said CEO and co-founder Mike Shebat. “We’re proud to see how our values of dreaming big, having an Olympian’s work ethic, maintaining a growth mindset, and being customer-obsessed have led to solid market traction. We look forward to the next phase of our journey.”

The funding brings Traba’s total raised to date to $43.6M. From offices in Miami and New York City, Traba serves leading warehouse and distribution brands. For more information, visit traba.work.

About Traba
Traba’s mission is to empower businesses and workers to reach their full productivity and potential. Traba is a technology company that is revolutionizing the broken staffing industry through a marketplace that connects light industrial businesses with reliable talent, while providing workers with flexible and meaningful opportunities. By connecting both groups, new levels of productivity, earning potential, and avenues for growth are unlocked. We’re proud to be backed by the world’s best investors, such as Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and General Catalyst.