Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur | Start and Grow Your Own Business 1262: The Hidden Leak Sinking Your Business (And How AI Can Plug It) w/ Sandra Bustos
Every business, regardless of size, struggles with a costly disconnect between their sales and finance systems. This gap leads to revenue leakage, delayed payments, and poor business visibility. In this episode, Sandra Bustos, founder and CEO of Meshly, breaks down how she’s tackling this universal problem head-on. She shares her journey from being a "dot connector" in major tech companies to building a solution that acts as a "Google Translate" between go-to-market and finance teams. This episode is packed with insights on how to leverage technology to build trust, why a solid data foundation is more critical than chasing AI hype, and how to ensure you're capturing every dollar you’ve earned.
💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business
- How to identify the "upstream" errors in your sales process (like a missing PO) that cause massive downstream revenue delays and leakage.
- Why a solid data schema is often more important than AI for building trust and ensuring accuracy in high-stakes financial workflows.
- How to turn deep-seated corporate frustration and personal experience into a scalable, problem-solving business idea.
- The critical reason why founder-led sales is a non-negotiable for achieving and maintaining product-market fit, long after you’ve hired a sales team.
- A simple "pilot" strategy to start diagnosing exactly where your business is losing money and why your teams might be working with conflicting data.
- How to build a solution that meets customers where they are—even if that means exporting back to a CSV—to earn their trust and drive adoption.
📝 About Sandra Bustos
Sandra Bustos is the founder and CEO of Meshly, the real-time trust layer for go-to-market and finance systems. A lifelong builder and natural dot connector, Sandra spent a decade leading go-to-market and customer success teams at major tech companies like Talk Desk and Autodesk. This firsthand experience exposed her to the costly and frustrating disconnects between teams and systems, driving her to found Meshly. Sandra's unique perspective combines a deep understanding of complex business workflows with a passion for creating technology that empowers finance leaders to capture revenue faster and with more confidence.
🎯 Sandra’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs
"If you have that itch to build, there's never going to be a right time."
📢 Memorable Quotes
- “In the age of AI, one thing's for sure, you can actually get to the wrong answer faster. If you put dirty inputs upstream of the AI solution, you're going to get really wonky, not valuable output.” – Sandra Bustos
- “It wasn't just about tedious work or manual disconnects, but it was really about business owners not having a grasp on their business. And that felt like a disservice.” – Sandra Bustos
- “The best founders I've ever worked with are truly founder-led sales, even beyond hiring their VP of sales. It forces you to stay engaged in those customer conversations… Product-market fit, I don't believe it's a one and done.” – Sandra Bustos
🔗 Links & Resources