1
1 Comment

Day 16 of a 30-day sprint to first paying customer — here's what's actually happening

Hey IH,

Quick honest update from the middle of a 30-day sprint.

The product: JABB Watch (jabbwatch.com). It watches up to 5 competitor pricing pages and sends one weekly email that tells you (a) what changed and (b) what that change likely means for your business specifically. €39/month, no setup fee, no annual contract.

Why this and not another page-watcher: The free tools detect change. The enterprise CI platforms interpret change but cost as much as a junior hire. In between there's a hole. I'm trying to fill it with a small, focused thing — not a CI suite.

Where I actually am (Day 16 of 30):

  • Landing page: live
  • Backend (AWS Lambda + DynamoDB + SES): working end-to-end
  • AI interpretation pipeline: working
  • Cold outreach: 36 personalized emails sent to founders in adjacent spaces (developer tools, analytics, newsletter infra, support, open-source). 34 delivered, 2 bounced. Zero replies.
  • Customers: 0
  • Time left in sprint: 14 days

What I'm learning so far, in order of how useful it's been:

  1. Personalization at 5 emails is worth it. Personalization at 50 emails is not — the quality collapses. I'd rather send 5 sharp emails than 50 that all sound the same.
  2. A €39/mo price tag does not remove the need to do real discovery. Cheap doesn't mean "doesn't need convincing." People still need to believe the thing works.
  3. The hardest part isn't building the monitoring. It's writing the one sentence that makes a stranger care.
  4. Silence is data. 34 delivered emails and zero replies in 3 days doesn't necessarily mean the product is wrong — but it's a real signal. My email deliverability scores 10/10, so they're landing in inboxes. The copy or the segment (or both) need work.
  5. Cold email is slow. Which is why I'm here — trying a warm channel alongside it.

What I'm doing this week:

  • Tearing apart my email copy and segment thesis. 0/34 with perfect deliverability = something about the pitch isn't landing.
  • This post is the parallel move — trying a community channel alongside cold email.
  • If nothing converts by Day 21, I'm doing a full audit of the landing page and rethinking who the actual buyer is.

What I'd love from you:

  • If you track (or have tried to track) competitor pricing for a small SaaS or ecom shop — what actually worked? What failed?
  • If you've done a 30-day "first paying customer" sprint, what do you wish you'd known on Day 16?

I'll post a real update here at the end of the sprint with numbers — customer or no customer.

Thanks for reading.
— Jonatan (Sweden)

on April 10, 2026
  1. 1

    I happen to know a few small SaaS or e-commerce shop founders who might be open to a quick free chat and could put you in touch.