Maksym Demianiuk

Today I am an entrepreneur and investor who sees business as a system of processes and interdependencies. Formally, my largest business is the Torba retail chain, but operationally I have not been involved in daily management for a long time. I now manage capital, my own and my friends', building diversified portfolios.

This came after a long and uncomfortable path: early market earnings in the 1990s, years of constant money-making that ended several times in bankruptcy, and a later rethinking when money stopped being the center of life.

The most painful point was 2011: my third bankruptcy at 32. In Ukraine, bankruptcy is not simply a certificate and freedom, so I spent about five more years repaying debts. It was important for me to walk that path. That was when I began looking at work differently: why I work, what I create, and what place money has in my life.

A separate turning point was the ayahuasca experience in Peru about 12 years ago. I did not leave it with one "genius insight", but with a different scale of lived experience, as if I had lived through many new states in one night. After that, I abandoned plans to go into politics and moved into IT. At the same time, I treat such practices soberly: I have seen how dangerous they can be for the psyche, so I believe the approach must be extremely careful.

For about 15 years, one principle has supported me: every person does the best they can at a specific moment. For me, this is not about simplifying life, but about making adequate decisions and responding to reality without unnecessary projections and blame.

How did the business idea come to you?

Torba was born from the critical need to "make a miracle" after my 2011 bankruptcy. I clearly saw the friction and costs between producers and end consumers. We assembled an experimental format from scratch: took a warehouse, installed simple shelving, used my market understanding from wholesale distribution, and created a model that essentially did not exist on the market.

The key idea was to refuse a markup: the purchase price equaled the sale price. Monetization was a fixed fee per receipt of 2.90 UAH. Suppliers and producers compensated our costs, while the customer paid a small fixed amount for the purchase itself. The first opening cost about $15,000.

At first, the miracle did not happen. For almost a year, the format did not deliver the expected economics, and I even considered closing it. The turning point came after very grounded steps: we created basic comfort for customers in a small-wholesale format, including normal flooring, refrigerators, and a more human look. Volumes rose sharply, and controlled evolution and scaling began.

What key skills helped you launch the business?

First, persistence. It can also work against me and create problems, but when directed correctly, I bring to completion things others consider unlikely.

Second, the foundation of growth for me is not so much "success tools" as expansion of worldview. When you see people, processes, and cause-effect relationships more broadly, decisions do not need to be read like instructions; they arise from understanding the system. This same lens shapes my management approach: I see business as a set of processes and dependencies, not as an organizational chart of departments.

What were the three hardest challenges in the first years?

1. Launching an experimental format so it would start working at all. The first year almost did not produce results, and we had to find simple but critical improvements in the store environment: conditions, refrigerators, and basic comfort.
2. Scaling. The first store was in a district town, and we had to understand how to open the next locations, hire a team, build a brand, and reproduce the model. The second store opened about two years later, and only after several years did we feel how to do it systematically.
3. Leaving operational management around 2017, in the sixth year of the business. For 1.5-2 years, we redistributed management roles with my partner. In practice, our approaches clashed: my partner had strong retail experience, while I had an experimental model. For a year, we worked almost at zero until we agreed on areas of responsibility.

What crises did your business face and how did you overcome them?

The key crisis in Torba's history was not market-related but management-related. We could not divide areas of influence with my partner, and the business suffered and earned almost nothing for a period. The solution was consciously letting go of operational management: agreeing that my partner would build retail the way he knew how, while I stopped interfering. After that, we also changed a basic element of the original concept by cancelling the receipt fee, and the business started growing.

Which decisions were most effective for company growth?

1. A model of attracting passive investors in different regions, without funds but with local investors, where we acted as managing partner. This allowed the network to develop faster.
2. An acquisition strategy, not only organic opening of locations. The strongest case was buying all Eko-market supermarkets in Western Ukraine about three years ago. At that time, we had 20 stores, and acquiring another 20 effectively doubled the network.
3. The management decision to move toward my partner's more traditional retail approach and abandon the experimental receipt-fee element as part of stabilization and further growth.

Which mistake do you now consider your most valuable experience?

My most valuable mistake was focusing on the picture instead of effectiveness. In previous businesses, I bought real estate for the business, took bank loans, invested in renovations and ownership attributes, without fully calculating risks. When the dollar almost doubled and interest rates rose, it triggered insolvency.

After that, I gave up the impulse to own for status and began seeing business as a system that is either effective or not. In Torba, we opened locations in rented premises for a long time. Only recently, last year, did we buy our first real estate, but as a separate direction or separate business, so as not to mix retail operating efficiency with assets and status decisions.

How did you earn your first $100?

I earned my first $100 selling sunflower oil from aluminum cans on the street in 30-degree frost.

How did you earn your first $1,000?

My first $1,000 came from market trading and my own kiosks.

How did you earn your first $10,000?

My first $10,000 came from moving from kiosks to wholesale trade: I carried goods wholesale and sold them at the market.

How did you earn your first $100,000?

My first $100,000 came from a distribution business: a company of about 150 people delivering goods across the region to stores.

How did you earn your first $1,000,000?

My first $1,000,000 came in retail, through Torba.

I can be useful in three practical areas.

The first is FMCG retail and the whole ecosystem around it: how producers, suppliers, networks, locations, and premises interact, and how to build an effective model in that complete system.

The second is the crypto industry. I have been in this market for about 10 years and understand projects and how everything works. Personally, I bought my first bitcoin for $100 and later sold it for more than $1,000.

The third is investment management, my current focus: diversification across asset classes and the logic of managing capital not as a bet, but as a system with risks, shares, and scenarios.

Your experience: how to systematize a business?

For me, systematization begins not with organizational structure, but with processes. I look at a business as a set of processes and interdependencies: which process depends on which, and what exactly creates the result.

For more than 10 years, I have not started with departments. First I build the process, then define roles for it, not positions. Often those roles do not match traditional ones, and we even invent our own names for them.

I am also close to the concept of teal companies and horizontal management. It is complex and requires a lot of attention to maintain, so I apply it only where I can sustain it properly, for example in the investment-management team. In Torba, this approach is not used.

Your experience: how to grow 2x in a year?

I have experienced scaling not only 2x, but at least 10x in a year. The company grew from 2 people to 80 by the end of the year, and volumes grew more than tenfold. This became possible because of two factors.

First, previous experience managing small, medium, and large businesses. When a strong opportunity appears, you can rebuild the system on the move and do in a year what takes others 5-10 years.

Second, high management flexibility. We experimented a lot with a horizontal approach, where people had broader decision-making authority. It accelerates change but has a cost: stress for the team, because roles and responsibilities can change very often.