Leyla Sudbury on Acquiring Minds: buying and building a 1989 electronics manufacturer

BSU Electronics CEO Leyla Sudbury is the guest on Acquiring Minds, the long-form interview show about buying, owning and operating small businesses, hosted by Will Smith. The episode was released on November 9, 2026.

Listen, watch or read the transcript on Acquiring Minds →

From advising factories to owning one

Leyla grew up near Manchester, in the industrial north of England, and trained as an industrial engineer. She started at a car factory in the UK, including a department called durability, where the job was essentially breaking cars, then spent nearly a decade as an operations consultant working in factories around the world. “Some people want to visit as many countries as they can,” she says. “My equivalent is factories.” After years of advising, it was time to run one directly.

How she found BSU

The search started with the macro: the case for building in the U.S., and the timing. From there it narrowed to something technical, a tier-two or tier-three supplier, and three theses, then to conversations, lots of them. She spent a month on planes visiting eight or nine factories, from Queens, New York to rural Alabama. BSU came through an online listing; what won it was showing up, and an early meeting of minds with Ahmad Chamseddine, who had led the business.

What she was looking for: work that is technically difficult and not available to everyone, good bones (a passionate team and loyal customers), and a seller willing to hand over thoughtfully. BSU had all three. In diligence, BSU’s team spoke to its main customers directly. In a business with customer relationships going back thirty years, that is the diligence that matters most.

Continuity first, then change

Leyla took over in November 2025. The first two to three months were one-to-ones with every employee; months four to six were on the road meeting every customer. Only then did anything change, and by then the team had told her what to change. Ahmad stayed on as a mentor through a deliberate handover, which made it possible to work out what is genuinely BSU’s secret sauce and what is just how it has always been done.

The biggest early priority was growth beyond a small group of very loyal, long-standing customers, so BSU stood up a real sales function. “The loyalty was never the problem,” she says. “Nothing was bringing the next thirty-year customer in.”

What comes next for BSU

The ambition is to be every engineering team’s first call, with the best customer service and the strongest technical team, from design through prototype to production, still building boards that go into space and down to the deep ocean floor. Four things get BSU there:

• A second facility, focused on higher-volume production, so customers can go from prototype all the way to scale without being handed off. BSU is in conversations with sellers now.
• AI, built around the team. A time study showed people love the hard engineering work and dislike the routine. BSU is building AI agents to take the routine work, share proactive status updates and keep cutting turn times. It is about capacity, not cost: demand is strong, and AI lets BSU keep saying yes.
• People. Training, step-ups and promotions with clear criteria and real coaching, plus a lot of Leyla’s own time on hiring.
• Sales, more proactive, “without being a nuisance.”

Get in touch

Two groups Leyla would especially like to hear from: owners of PCB assembly businesses thinking about what comes next, whatever stage they are at, and engineers and operators who want to work somewhere that promotes people and means it. Follow BSU on LinkedIn, start a quote, or email info@bsuinc.com.

Listen to the full episode on Acquiring Minds or on YouTube.