Week 2 update: 50 Figma users, 0 paying subscribers, and I built an Illustrator plugin
Keeping it honest as always. Here's where things stand after two weeks.
Numbers:
— Figma: 50 users
— Framer: 6 users
— Product Hunt: 51 points, 84 followers (launched 12 days ago)
— Paying subscribers: 0
This week I didn't focus much on promotion — the plugin went through an upgrade and re-review cycle, so I mostly stayed quiet and let it sit. Posted a couple of times in the Figma and Framer communities, picked up some likes and followers there.
The unexpected thing I built this week:
An Adobe Illustrator version of Glyfiq. I wasn't planning it but here we are. It's in testing now and will be available as a free download on Gumroad in the next few days. Healthcare designers who live in Illustrator — this one's for you.
Library update:
I edited and prepared around 100 new icons this week. The library is about to hit 500+, with 50+ free icons for personal use. Slow and steady toward 6,000+.
On Product Hunt:
51 points and 84 followers. Honestly not sure what this translates to long term. Maybe nothing, maybe some SEO value, maybe someone stumbles on it later. We'll see.
The honest truth:
No paying subscribers yet. But I still believe there's a real audience for this — designers who need consistent medical icons and want someone who can draw new ones in the same style on request. That's not something big icon libraries offer. I just haven't found those people yet.
Still building. Still looking.
What caught my attention wasn't the 0 paying subscribers.
It was the sentence "I just haven't found those people yet."
Sometimes that's exactly what's happening.
Other times the harder question is whether the absence of paying users is teaching you something about the audience assumption itself.
The tricky part is that both interpretations can feel equally reasonable this early on.
You're right, and I've been sitting with both interpretations.
The honest answer is I don't know yet which one it is. Maybe healthcare designers don't look for icon plugins the way developers look for dev tools. Maybe they just grab whatever's free and move on. Maybe the pain point isn't painful enough to pay for.
Or maybe I just haven't reached the right person yet.
The problem seems to be distribution, not product. But I'm aware that's exactly what someone with a wrong audience assumption would also say.
If I hit 500 users and still zero conversions — that's probably the audience assumption talking.
But here's the thing — I didn't start this randomly. I worked in this space. Before AI flooded the stock platforms, my medical icons were genuinely in demand. I know who was buying them: large agencies, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare organizations. And I know something important about that audience — they don't care much about price. What they care about is legality, official procurement, and reliability. Free products actually create problems for them. How do you put a free tool through accounting? What happens when it goes paid tomorrow and suddenly you have a licensing issue? For companies like that, paying is easier than not paying. They actively look for legitimate digital solutions that solve a real design need.
The problem isn't that those people don't exist. It's that my icons got buried under a mountain of AI-generated content and they can't find me anymore.
So I need to find them myself. And I think somewhere in the middle — me pushing outward, them searching for something real — we'll meet.
That's actually the part I'd be most curious about.
Reading your reply, I found myself wondering whether the evidence is really supporting the discoverability conclusion or whether several different explanations are being bundled together under it.
The reason I ask is that past demand, current visibility, procurement behavior, willingness to pay, and audience assumptions can all point in a similar direction while still implying very different next decisions.
I've got a few thoughts on that, but it's probably more than I'd try to unpack properly in a thread.
What's the best email to reach you on?