In an office building in downtown Glendale once occupied by the Museum of Selfies, there’s now a software company for the agriculture industry. PickTrace moved to the San Fernando Valley less than six months ago from Emeryville in Northern California and the sales office in Colorado. Harrison Steed, co-founder of the company along with his brother Austin Steed, said that Glendale fit a lot of the criteria the two were looking for when it came to a new location. “When Austin and I came out here, we saw how the east side was less congested, we saw the infrastructure was well maintained, there were 130 restaurants in a half-mile radius and there was major freeways onramps on all four sides of the city,” Steed said. Also playing into the move was the fact that ServiceTitan Inc., a software company for electricians, plumbers and other home improvement professionals, was located right up the street. While conceding that ServiceTitan is further along than PickTrace, Steed said there were similarities in the backgrounds of both companies. Just as the Steeds came from a family that operated citrus farms near San Diego, the founders of ServiceTitan came from a background in residential contracting businesses. “They started and focused on a very un-sexy industry and they maintained that and built out a fantastic product,” Harrison Steed added. “It was definite a draw to see that here.” PickTrace employs about 24 workers, with most being in Glendale. Six are based out of Mexico. The company, which the brothers started in 2014, is looking to bring on a dozen employees by the end of the year, primarily on the software engineering side of the business. “If a good candidate comes in the door, we will hire them no matter what even if it wasn’t a planned hire,” Steed said. The staff develops workforce management software for more than 100 large farming companies in California, Oregon and Washington. It tracks how much produce an individual picked and where it has been picked in real time. “We make sure the growers are compliant with labor laws,” Harrison Steed said. “We also make help them to make sure their payroll is timely and accurate.” Additionally, the software can look for inefficiencies in the farming operations. “If there is a bottleneck in the supply chain in the field, we try to alleviate that,” he added. The brothers divide up the duties of running PickTrace. Harrison Steed handles sales and operations while he described Austin as being the technical guru who puts together the software. The future of the company is focused on apple growers. In the next year or two all of the software development will go toward apples “with the intention that as we grow and get sales we’ll expand to other categories. It is super critical for us to be focused to make as many of our customers happy and successful as possible without diluting our efforts,” he added.