SRES SafeStack | October 2026

October marks the three-year anniversary of SecuRESafe (SRES). To open this edition of SafeStack, co-founders Jody Nelson and Gokul Krithivasan share lessons from two different founder perspectives. Jody draws on his experience founding or co-founding three companies, while Gokul reflects on what he has learned as a first-time founder.

Keep reading for public training opportunities through the end of 2026, including ISO 26262 certificate courses and SRES AI Safety Week featuring ISO/IEC TS 22440 and ISO 8800 training. We also share our latest insights on Cyber Resilience Act reporting obligations, functional safety and AI systems, navigating the EU AI Act, and the evolution of machinery safety for industrial humanoids.

🎉 SRES Turns Three: Lessons From Our Co-Founders

Three Lessons From an Experienced Founder

By Jody Nelson, SRES Managing Partner and Co-Founder

I want to begin by thanking our loyal customers and our employees for their trust and partnership over the past three years. It is hard to believe that this October marks the three-year anniversary of SecuRESafe (SRES). I have founded or co-founded three companies, and I have learned many lessons along the way. Three stand out as the most important.

Lesson 1: A founder’s mindset is a farmer’s mindset.

I grew up in rural Minnesota and spent most summers on my sister and brother-in-law’s farm, where they raised dairy cattle and sheep. One truth about livestock is unmistakable. There are no days off. You can be tired, you can be sick, but the work still has to be done, or the animals will not survive. Building a company feels the same. A founder’s mindset means showing up every day, not out of obligation, but out of responsibility for the people who depend on you.

Lesson 2: Culture is built from the bottom up.

I borrow this from the co-founders of The Home Depot, whose leadership model I deeply respect. They described an inverted pyramid with management at the bottom and employees and customers at the top. You cannot have happy customers without happy employees. When that balance is healthy, a company can navigate any hardship. That philosophy has shaped the culture I value most at SRES.

Lesson 3: Protect the culture above all else.

This lesson comes from my daughter’s rugby coach. Her high school team has won twenty-four state championships and is consistently ranked among the top programs in the nation. He tells the players, “I do not care if we lose a match, but we cannot lose our culture. Every day you need to improve yourself, and more importantly, improve your teammates.” That mindset is written directly in our employee handbook, and it is something I believe in strongly. Individual excellence matters, but collective excellence is what sustains a team.

These three lessons, responsibility, culture, and collective improvement, have guided me throughout this journey. They continue to shape how I lead and how I hope SRES grows in the years ahead.

Three Lessons From a First-Time Founder

By Gokul Krithivasan, SRES Managing Partner and Co-Founder

It is incredible to mark three years since we started SRES, and for me, three years free of Monday blues.

I owe that to the team around me, a team that lives for the most challenging engineering problems, ready to dig deep and build each other up. With the right environment and the right people, the years go by fast. Three years in, here is what I have learned as a first-time founder.

Lesson 1: Building from the ground up is scary but very liberating. Have fun with it.

Not every decision pays off, but building from scratch has given me the freedom to let go of ideas that don’t work and pivot quickly. A purposeful company takes a lot of care to build, and giving yourself the license to experiment every week with the right people is so much fun and deeply satisfying.

Lesson 2: Purpose attracts the right people. Challenge them and empower them.

Some of my happiest moments come when team members tell me they find their work at SRES meaningful and enjoy the environment we have built together. That means trusting them with hard problems and giving them room to solve them. It immensely motivates me to work every day to remove friction and put them in positions to do their best work. As a fully remote team across four countries on two continents, purpose is our glue and not just a slogan.

Lesson 3: The most important work is often the least flashy.

As the world goes through a major AI transformation, someone has to do the careful, unglamorous work that keeps everyone safe. The SRES team takes on some of the hardest safety problems in Physical AI, breaks them down, and keeps moving the needle for the industry. We don’t need awards. The impact is what matters to each one of us.

I am deeply grateful to our customers, our team, and our partners for the trust over the past three years.