Show HN: Crazy lessons from 6 months of building extraDock
by imfrankkarro | 2025-08-18 11:41:38+00:00
Hey!

I'm someone who runs 2 or 3 monitors daily: one for coding, one for chat apps, and one for design tools. But macOS only gives you a single Dock, which either stays on your main screen or auto-swaps wherever your mouse is. That felt clumsy. I just wanted an easy way to keep a "chat dock" on my side monitor, a "development dock" on my center monitor, and maybe another "utilities dock" somewhere else - without messing with some complex, heavy app.

Now it's been 6 months, since I launched extraDock, and it's been a hell of a ride - people sending love, suggestions, asking for extra features and so on and on.

So what have I learned during those 6 months?

1⃣ Solve your own damn problem

I didn’t build extraDock for others. I built it because I was annoyed as hell. One Dock for three monitors made no sense. I wanted a chat dock on one screen, dev dock in the middle, and maybe a tools dock on the side. That’s it.

Didn’t want to buy some bloated app. So I opened xCode, used AI to speed things up, and built exactly what I needed.

2⃣ Wrap it up and ship fast

Once it worked, I didn’t waste time. I packaged it, built a landing page, set up Stripe, and pushed it live the same day. No roadmap. No fancy onboarding. Just: here’s the app, it works, it’s €4.99. Did

The goal wasn’t to “launch a startup.” I just wanted to see if anyone else felt the same pain.

3⃣ Tell niche corners of the internet

Next day, I posted in a few Reddit and niche forums. No hype, no “growth hack.” Just: “ExtraDock - Create more docks for MacOS”. Did not even put down a description. Just a banner image.

That was enough. A few people bought. Some said thank you. Some wanted more out of it.

4⃣ STFU & Listen People started writing in. Not just support questions - but detailed ideas, love notes, bug reports. I listened. I replied. I stayed open.

If you give people a safe space to be honest, they will help you build something better.

5⃣ You’ll know when it clicks

If you're asking “do I have product-market fit?” - probably not. With extraDock, I didn’t have to guess. People bought. Replied. Gave feedback. Asked for features. Shared it.

The energy was there. And I just followed it.

6⃣ Solve problems WHEN THEY ARISE, not before. It's easy to get lost in building systems before you launch. There's only one problem - if it won't work, you'll lose all the time you put into building the systems.

At first, I didn't even have automated file delivery to customers. I shipped manually with an apology of "Sorry, systems failed, here's your download", and that was it. When I got sick of doing that, only then I built automations for delivery.

7⃣ Turn feedback into updates.

I didn't start updating app like a mad person. I just collected all of the feedback that matched my vision / sounded reasonable, and then implemented it. I tested, shipped it, launched it again.

8⃣ Experiment with pricing

I thought - okay - I'm providing much more value now, and I guess it's time to test for pricing. And as I did not have ANY EXPECTATIONS and did not need it to sell, I just raised prices by 7X, even though my friends all told me that I'm nuts and nobody will never buy it. Guess what happened? A) For every sale, I now made 7X, B) I had even more sales, C) More time and budget for the upcoming updates. Everybody wins.

Last words Everything I've done with extraDock, I've done against all my previous learnings in business. There has been so much unlearning to do, that I've even started a journal on it, called Unlearning. Hope to publish it soon, too. So much stuff that goes against the grain, but somehow end up working.

Even though, this is not a crazy revenue source, it's definitely a good project to do some unlearning, and get better at launching, shipping, building, and developing my own mind.

Thank you so much. I know some of you here use extraDock as well.