Only a month or so had passed since the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia, in 1989, and I was looking for investors to launch an economical weekly. I hadn’t thought about addressing Swiss publishers, although Swiss investors had shown an interest in building an airport in Karlovy Vary.
Unexpectedly, Thomas Trüb called announcing that he would be coming to Prague and was interested in media-ventures, at the time he was the editor-in-chief of the new weekly Cash. We met and exchanged greetings – then we went to have a beer. After the fifth we began to understand each other very well, we had already discussed a joint venture – the first between an easter and a western company in the media-industry. After the tenth beer we had a deal. And shortly that we started the economical weekly Profit, published in Prague, an extension of Cash.
Thomas was in many ways my guru and I have learned a lot from him. He was not merely a man, for us he was a phenomenon and phantom – two or three hours of sleep per night seemed enough for him to be in great shape the next busy day.
