JANI GYLLENBERG
Work Approach In action Get in touch
Untangling complexity in the boating industry

I make work easier - for your team and your customers.

When marketing, sales, operations, customer experience, and technology stop working as one, momentum leaks out - quietly and expensively.

The answer usually isn’t another generic tool. It’s a better way of working - designed around the customer, the team, and the business behind both.

See the work Get in touch

Founder of Untanglead · 20+ years inside the industry · building technology to make the work easier at every step.

Previously led innovation, growth, and marketing at Marine Connection · Inaugural Marine Marketer's Captain of Industry · 4× Neptune Award winner · Boating Industry 40 Under 40

Jani Gyllenberg
External perspective
“Jani dreams and designs in that space where creativity, intuitive function, and design come together.”

- Michele Goldsmith, Soundings Trade Only, presenting the Captain of Industry Award

What I actually do
  • software developer
  • marketing professional
  • business development
  • I make the three work as one.

Because the expensive problems are rarely just marketing problems, software problems, or sales problems.

They live between the customer experience, the team’s workflow, and the systems underneath - and that’s where I do my best work.

Phil Piontek
"He pushes ideas further, challenges the status quo, and ensures every decision serves a bigger purpose."
- Phil Piontek, General Sales Manager, Marine Connection
The track record

Three times the business needed something that didn't exist.

Each began as a gap no off-the-shelf product filled. Each made an impact the industry recognized.

Neptune Award - Best Website
2025 Best Website

The Marine Connection website

Problem
The old experience didn't meet the customer where they were: "call for price," no real answers, and lead forms that felt like "leave your comments on the way out."
Move
We rebuilt it into a guided buying experience: real pricing, instant quotes, sea-trial booking, and deep-linked content that worked the way customers expected - while reducing the manual upkeep behind it.
Result
45%
more leads
82%
more time on listings
149%
traffic growth YoY
15 → 93
SEO health
90 days
to positive ROI
One system
marketing, sales & ops unified
Guided buying experience Revenue system Less manual upkeep
Marketing Innovation Award
2023 Marketing Innovation

Quoter with HubSpot

Problem
Quoting was slow. Pricing was inconsistent. Visibility was limited. Too much of the sales process depended on people remembering to update the CRM after the work had already happened.
Move
Moved quoting inside the CRM and connected the sales process to inventory, pricing, tasks, and customer behavior - so the work created the data instead of asking the team to recreate it later. Clean quotes out the door in under 60 seconds.
Result
20,000+
quotes
$2B+
in quoted boats
1,000+
boats sold
24 weeks
concept to production
"Before Quoter, the accuracy of our data directly correlated with an individual's recollection… Forgetfulness is no longer an excuse."
- Timo Turkki, General Manager, Marine Connection
Quote-to-close system Runs inside the CRM Quotes in 60 seconds
Distinct interactive showroom displays
Boating Industry Top Product Award
2015 Top Product

Interactive displays

Problem
Showrooms couldn't bridge a customer's online research and the boat right in front of them.
Move
Founded Distinct and built interactive touchscreen displays that closed the gap, right on the floor.
Result
Nationwide
dealer adoption, incl. MarineMax
2015
Boating Industry Top Product
10 years
still on showroom floors
Backbone
data foundation for Quoter
"Distinct is on to something big with their interactive displays."
- Kelley Barry, MarineMax
Product Hardware × Software Founded & built
Point of view

Every off-the-shelf tool ships with someone else's idea of how you should run.

Choose a piece of software and you also choose its makers' assumptions about how your business should operate. Sometimes that's a gift - you absorb decades of hard-won knowledge and adopt the ways the whole industry has already agreed are best. Other times it's a hard constraint that fights the way you actually work - and your team and your customers feel it every day.

→ When it fits, off-the-shelf is the right call - and I'll tell you when it does.

→ When it doesn't, you shouldn't have to bend your business to fit the software.

I build around your business model - not just where it is today, but scalable for where it's going.

How I see it

I notice the problems a business has stopped noticing.

I've always been bothered by careless systems. The form that asks the wrong question. The workflow that wastes ten minutes. The software that makes a good employee look unprepared. The moment a customer feels the company stop paying attention.

Most businesses learn to tolerate those things and call them normal. I can’t - and that’s where the work begins.

The method

Untangling a business isn't guesswork. The cost always hides where systems don't talk, work falls between teams, and nothing connects.

01

Find the tangle

Look for the dead zones, duplicate work, broken data, and customer moments the business has learned to tolerate.

02

Design the better way

Map the simpler path: what should connect, what should disappear, what should be automated, and how the experience should feel.

03

Build it

The work is not finished when the idea sounds good. It is finished when the team can use it, the customer can feel it, and the old friction is gone.

In progress

Turning marketing chaos into plain-English business intelligence.

One current tangle: marketing ROI. Boating businesses spend heavily to generate demand, but too often the answers are scattered: what a lead really costs, what a sale really costs, and which channels actually move revenue.

Untanglead Insights brings those pieces together and turns the mess into plain-English answers a dealer can act on.

See Untanglead Insights →
Untanglead marketing intelligence report
In action

This is what connected looks like.

A quote, started from the live listing page - the exact moment the customer gets serious. The connected boat business, in a single motion.

Selective engagements

Where is your business
most tangled?

Diagnosis first: a hard look at what's quietly costing you. Then - and only then - the build. Principal-led, few at a time.

Get in touch → LinkedIn