FoA 392: Ag Labor and Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition With Edward Silva of másLabor

Put AI to work on your farm: https://farmwave.io/

másLabor: https://www.maslabor.com/

Edward Silva is the CEO of másLabor and AgWorks, the nation’s leading providers of H-2A (agriculture) and H-2B (non-agriculture) labor solutions. As one of six children of Portuguese immigrants, Edward and his brothers grew up farming in California's Central Valley for their family's almond and grape operation. Edward's academic background includes studies in International Agricultural Development at the University of California, Davis, and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He has dedicated his company’s mission to saving U.S. businesses by helping them secure the workforce they need to successfully run their operation. másLabor, under his leadership, represents more clients in more industries and geographies than any other service provider for H-2 visas.

One cool part of today’s story is that Edward had reached out to me cold years ago in October of 2020 when he was fresh out of business school and looking for a business to buy. I read his message later in today’s episode and explain why it was so memorable and why it’s so cool that here he is three years later as a guest on the podcast. 

So not only do we talk about the need for ag labor and some of the challenges around the H2A process, but we also talk about entrepreneurship through acquisition, and Edward’s journey of starting a search fund to find an existing agricultural business to buy, and how that led to masLabor.