We are Traba. The future of work is here.

I began my career at McMaster Carr, a family-owned industrial supply company where I was introduced to the world of warehouses, factories, and fulfillment centers. This is the unseen and under-appreciated backbone of our country that powers same-day delivery and keeps food on the shelves at your local grocery store. Like most companies in light industrial, McMaster Carr’s staffing needs varied wildly depending on our unpredictable order volume. We needed the ability to flex our staff up and down to meet fluctuating demand.

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Historically, warehouses and distribution centers have solved this problem by relying on light industrial staffing, a critical $50 billion dollar industry that is utterly broken. It’s slow (7 days to fill staffing requests), inefficient (only 46% of requests get filled), and has high turnover (75%-95% of workers churn after each shift).

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I know we can do better. What’s more, working Americans and industrial businesses deserve better.

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I left McMaster Carr to join the founding team at UberEats, where we learned how to best apply technology to create robust marketplaces. We leveraged great technology and operational excellence to ensure there were always the perfect amount of couriers, eaters, and restaurants in any given location at any given time. It’s time to apply this kind of thinking to the light industrial staffing industry.

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Traba empowers entry-level workers to find work opportunities from their phone, connecting workers to available shifts at fulfillment centers, warehouses, event venues, and food processing facilities all at zero cost to the worker. Emphasizing choice, flexibility and transparency, Traba empowers workers to build their own schedule, with pay rates and employer quality scores fully available up-front. On the employer side, shift managers have access to the highest quality workers in the industry.

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This is better for workers and employers alike. It’s also a massive opportunity. What’s our ceiling? If we simply replaced the existing and stagnant American staffing industry, somewhere around $50 billion. But there are 75% more warehousing job openings now than before COVID, and we are poised to expand globally.

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Traba’s mission is to empower workers and businesses to reach their full potential and productivity. Eventually, this will encompass several dimensions such as revamping warehouse tech stacks, creating embedded finance solutions, analytics, training, scheduling, upskilling, and community.

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Enthusiastic as we are, our goals are enormous. We can achieve them, but not without a world-class team, which is exactly what we’re building. Traba is a tight-knit group of proven builders and our values reflect the challenge we’re working to overcome.

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We believe in dreaming big. We’re audacious builders who won’t stop until we succeed, and we’re not going to sacrifice long-term value for short-term results.

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We believe in an Olympian’s work ethic. We work harder, longer, and smarter - not just two out of three.

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We believe in customer obsession. We go the extra mile for our TrabaPros (workers) and TrabaJobs (businesses). We remain laser-focused on delivering high quality products and services that solve these often-overlooked communities’ greatest obstacles to maximizing their potential and productivity.

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We believe in the Growth Mindset. We confront the toughest challenges head-on and persevere. Sometimes we fail, but through our resilience we brush ourselves off, adapt, learn, and push forward undeterred.

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And we’re doing all this in one of the fastest growing cities in America, with a direct path both to the continental United States and Latin America: Miami. This is an optimistic city that believes in growth. A quintessential mix of cultures and backgrounds united by the belief we can achieve whatever we want in this world if we set our minds to it and work together. (It’s also not terrible swimming on a sunny beach on weekends in the middle of the winter!)

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We’re fortunate to have some of the world's best investors on our journey with us. This includes Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Village Global, the Founders of Eventbrite, Lattice, Lambda School, Cloud Trucks, Notion, Trusted Health, Clearing, Compass, Eightsleep, Behance, Maiya, OpenStore and OnDeck.

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If you are excited about our mission to help small businesses and workers reach their full potential, join our team. If you are a TrabaPro looking for flexible work, download our app. If you are a business that needs staff, get in contact with us and let us help you.

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And now, for us and for America, it’s time to get back to work.

- Mike Shebat, CEO