Day 6 — Embedded Distribution

How products grow by living inside other products.

So, today I want to talk about embedded distribution.

It’s something that really interests me because it connects nicely with everything we’ve been talking about over the past few days, this idea of rethinking what distribution and growth mean.

At its core, embedded distribution is when your product grows by living inside other products. Instead of trying to drag users to your app or platform, you meet them inside the tools they already use.

Think of it like this: instead of saying “come to my shop,” you say “what if my shop existed inside yours?”

Let’s look at the food brands again. (I know I mention them a lot). Look at how Bokku Mart or Chicken Republic expand. They don’t just build new outlets; they embed themselves in places where people already gather. They move closer to demand instead of waiting for demand to come to them.

That’s what PayPal did early on by integrating directly into eBay. Stripe did the same thing when it became the invisible payment layer for Shopify.

OpenAI’s app ecosystem is a modern version of this. When you open Canva or Spotify now, you can access GPT-style assistants inside. That’s an embedded distribution, your product quietly riding on another’s rails.

For embedded distribution to work, your product has to be designed for integration. That means flexible APIs, simple webhooks, lightweight SDKs and a product experience that respects the host platform.

When you embed, you’re a guest. You add value without overwhelming. You blend into their workflow without breaking the rhythm.

That’s why Slack apps, Figma plugins, and Chrome extensions work so well. They’re discoverable where users already work. No one opens Slack to find Loom, but they might discover Loom inside Slack because it’s right there, helping them record a message in context.

There are three layers of embedded distribution.

First, ecosystem distribution occurs when you build within another ecosystem, like Slack or Shopify.
Second, workflow distribution when your product becomes part of the user’s process, like Loom or Zapier.
And third, data distribution when your product becomes a bridge, like how Mixpanel connects smoothly with GTM and GA4.

Each one expands your reach without forcing users to move. That’s embedded distribution. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Cheers!