Day 18: Ghost Distribution 👻

The kind of distribution nobody sees, but everyone uses.

Hi everyone, it’s Day 18.

I’ve been thinking about something I haven’t really talked about yet, a kind of hidden distribution I like to call Ghost Distribution.

It’s what happens when your product spreads, earns, and scales… but nobody outside the chain even knows it’s you behind the scenes.

The first time I saw this up close was back when I worked at a PropTech company. We helped people invest functionally in real estate, but at some point, we started experimenting with a different model. Instead of going directly to customers, we reached out to other companies that already offered investment products. The idea was simple: what if we powered their real estate investment option quietly, so they face the users, and we handle the engine?

The users would never know it was us. But every transaction still flowed through our system.

That’s ghost distribution.

You’re not the face of the product, you’re the infrastructure. You power the value while someone else carries the brand. It’s like a white-label arrangement, but not exactly. White-label is often about selling your product for someone to rebrand. Ghost distribution, on the other hand, is about building reach invisibly, as your service moves through other brands, silently collecting revenue and users.

That’s the beauty of ghost distribution: you’re not chasing attention; you’re chasing integration. You don’t need virality, you need volume.

It’s a quiet kind of domination.