(Virtual) A Founder’s Playbook for Turning Connections Into Relationships
For early-stage founders, growth starts with relationships, but most founders don’t have a system for managing them. Connections stay scattered across LinkedIn, email, and half-finished follow-ups, leading to missed opportunities with customers, partners, advisors, and investors. In this session, Sandy Yu shares practical tactics for using LinkedIn and follow-up as part of a founder’s relationship-building operating system.
What you’ll take away:
A framework for treating your network as a founder growth engine
Tactics for using LinkedIn to find and connect with the right people
A simple approach to outreach messages that get responses
A follow-up system for post-event, post-intro, and post-conversation moments
A lightweight way to track relationships without overcomplicating it
Common networking mistakes to avoid as you build your pipeline
Whether you’re building your first customer pipeline, looking for warmer introductions, or trying to make better use of the relationships you already have, this session will help you approach networking and follow-up with greater clarity and intention.
Apply to the EchoHer Founder Fellowship, a non-dilutive program supporting women and non-binary founders with funding, practical resources, founder education, and access to the EchoHer ecosystem.
Learn More About the Fellowship →
EchoHer members also receive access to selected workshops, event recordings, founder resources, and community programming.
Explore EchoHer Membership →
Speaker
Sandy Yu is a fractional customer growth executive, GTM advisor, and founder of Revenue Retention Advisors. A 25-year tech veteran, Sandy led global GTM teams at Oracle, Cisco, PwC, and WebEx. Sandy started her own consultancy in 2022, specializes in transforming hyper-growth B2B SaaS companies with $25-$100M in annual revenue and driving sustainable revenue growth by keep the customers they already have and get them to buy more. In 2025, Sandy delivered GTM workshops around the world to help CROs identify and fix the hidden revenue leaks and is slowly eroding growth.
Her passion projects include a advisory role at EchoHer, a non-profit that champions women and non-binary entrepreneurs; at The San Francisco Job Forum, a non-profit that provide free group coaching. Sandy is the co-founder of Networking with a Purpose, a cross-company networking forum that connects women and allies in tech.
Sandy is based in the SF Bay Area and lives with her husband and twin daughters who are college bound. In her free time, she loves to play tennis, pickleball and travel around the world.
Host
EchoHer is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering women and non-binary founders and funders by increasing their representation and success in entrepreneurship. We foster a supportive ecosystem that drives meaningful change and creates impactful opportunities through monthly events, co-working opportunities, curated networking sessions, pitch nights, and insightful panel discussions.