I Failed My First Product Hunt Launch. Here's What I Changed for Round 2.

Robin Monteiro — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 09:13:21 +0000

Six months ago I launched a PNG to SVG converter on Product Hunt.

Zero votes. Zero comments. Zero traffic.

Today I relaunched the same product. Same URL, same name. But the tool is unrecognizable.

Here's what happened in between. 👇

🪤 The Generic Trap

VectoSolve started simple. Upload an image, get a clean SVG back. That's it.

The problem? There are 50 tools that do this. When you Google "png to svg", you use whatever comes up first, convert your file, and never come back. That's exactly what happened. Users converted one image and left.

I had no retention, no differentiation, and a Product Hunt launch that proved it.

📧 The Email That Changed Everything

A few weeks after launch, a Cricut crafter emailed me. Her SVG kept breaking in Design Space (the software Cricut machines use to cut vinyl, paper, fabric).

I had no idea what Design Space was. I had never touched a Cricut in my life.

But I looked into it. Turns out there are very specific things that break SVGs in Cricut machines: gradients, masks, text elements, certain stroke types, embedded images. Every Cricut user deals with this. And nobody was solving it automatically.

So I built a health check. 9 automated tests that scan your SVG and auto-fix everything Design Space chokes on.

🔀 Then Every Niche Showed Up With Different Problems

Once the Cricut tool went live, other communities started finding VectoSolve.

Laser cutters didn't want SVGs at all. They wanted DXF files with cut/engrave layers and G-code with real feed rates for their machines. So I built svg-to-dxf and svg-to-gcode converters with material presets.

Etsy sellers didn't care about the SVG itself. They wanted to go from an image to a full Etsy listing without writing anything. So I plugged in Gemini AI to generate titles, 13 tags, and descriptions from the vectorized image.

Embroidery people wanted DST, PES, and JEF files with hoop size selection and thread color mapping. Formats I had literally never heard of before they asked.

Each time I thought "this is too niche, nobody will use this." Each time I was wrong.

🛠️ What The Niche Pivot Looked Like In Practice

The core product stayed the same: AI-powered vectorization (I use Recraft's API, ~$0.01 per conversion).

What changed is everything that happens after vectorization. Depending on who you are and what you need, VectoSolve post-processes the SVG differently:

✂️ Cricut crafters → Design Space compatibility check with auto-fix
🔥 Laser cutters → DXF with LWPOLYLINE layers (CUT/ENGRAVE) and GRBL-compatible G-code
🏷️ Etsy sellers → AI-written listing ready to paste
🧵 Embroidery users → DST + PES + JEF files with hoop sizes and thread colors
📦 Everyone → a ZIP with all relevant formats, a README, and a license file

One upload, then the right output for your workflow.

📊 The Numbers, Honestly

I'm not going to pretend this is a massive success story yet.

Most of my revenue still comes from the generic converter. The $0.65 first purchase drives the majority of payments. The niche tools are live and getting organic traffic from SEO, but niche-specific pack sales are basically zero so far.

What I can say is that niche users come back. Generic users don't. And the SEO pages I built for each niche are starting to rank. My image-to-gcode page is position 5 on Google with a 10% CTR. That kind of intent-driven traffic doesn't come from being "another SVG converter."

⚙️ The Stack

For the devs curious about the technical side:

Layer	Tech
Frontend	Next.js + Tailwind
Backend	Supabase (with RLS)
Payments	Stripe (one-time packs + subscriptions)
Vectorization	Recraft API
AI features	Gemini (Etsy listing generation)
Email	AWS SES
Rate limiting	Upstash Redis
Hosting	Vercel
Code	100% written with Claude Code, solo

I ship updates every day. Sometimes 10 in a day. The entire codebase was written by one person talking to an AI.

💡 What I Learned

Generic tools compete on price. Niche tools compete on "this was built for me."

When your product is generic, users compare you to 50 alternatives and pick the cheapest or the first Google result. When your product solves a specific workflow problem, users tell their friends about it.

The Cricut subreddit, the laser cutting forums, the Etsy seller groups — these communities talk to each other. One person finds your tool, shares it, and suddenly you have a channel you never built.

I stopped trying to be the best SVG converter. I started being the only converter that understands what Cricut crafters, laser cutters, and Etsy sellers actually need.

🚀 Round 2

Today VectoSolve is back on Product Hunt. Same name, completely different product.

👉 If you want to check it out: VectoSolve on Product Hunt

And if you have questions about the build, the stack, or the pivot — I'm here.

I'm Robin, solo dev from France 🇫🇷. I went from construction work in Ireland to building SaaS tools. You can find VectoSolve at vectosolve.com.

Also have an agency if you want to work with us: go-to-agency.com

I built an AI-powered PNG to SVG converter here's what I learned

Robin Monteiro — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:08:26 +0000

I'm a solo developer and I built VectoSolve — an AI tool that converts raster images (PNG, JPG, WEBP) into clean, scalable SVG and DXF files.
The problem
Manual tracing in Illustrator takes 20-30 minutes per image.
Nobody wants to pay $50/hour for a designer to trace a logo.
The stack

Next.js 14 (App Router)
Supabase (auth + database)
Stripe (payments)
Vercel (deployment)

What I learned

Niche landing pages convert way better than one generic homepage. I built 19 dedicated pages targeting specific use cases (logo to SVG, JPG to DXF, etc.)
Free tier with watermark → paid conversion works. Users try it, see the quality, and upgrade.
SEO takes time but compounds. Each landing page is a new entry point from Google.

Results so far
1,200+ users, 50,000+ images converted.
If you work with vector files, give it a try: vectosolve.com

Happy to answer any questions about the stack or the business side.

Have a nice day all !!

Forem: Robin Monteiro