Thomas Trüb is a man of many talents: he knows an opportunity when he sees one, he isn’t afraid to take risks, and he’s got Ringier’s back.

In the media business, he was (and still is) a visionary, ahead of his time. Forty years ago, he already saw football as the driving force behind the TV business, sniffed out opportunities for business publications in Eastern Europe and Asia like a truffle dog. While I was producing a tame cooking show for the conservative Swiss among us, he was launching Betty’s Kitchen (with Betty Bossi) on Chinese television. Only once did he fish in troubled waters, and his idea of a roll-up screen was unsuccessful.

Thomas is, at first glance, a very ordinary person, but with very extraordinary determination.

He is down to earth, easy living, at times introvert at other extrovert, he enjoys street food but also fine dining. He lives the way he wants, but also shows great efforts to do good things for other people – he set up, for example, a social enterprise in Vietnam to help many poor families’ children. One of the most important things: Thomas kept all the money, every dollar that he made in Vietnam, in the country. And he is continuing to support Vietnam’s poor. That, I believe, is proof of his true and beautiful heart.
Thomas is a visionary, he likes to try and explore new things. He is the world-traveler who went to a lot of places where others don’t go, he made all the way to Bhutan, Laos, even to North Korea.

All the time he is surrounded by friends. Because he is a very special charming and charismatic man he has many friends for a long, long, long time. Thomas lives his life wisely and spends his time smartly – he is enjoying every moment he can while doing good things to other people. The world needs more people like him.

My wife and myself are very happy to belong to your good friends, dear Thomas.

Thomas is a real challenger to me.

I remember when I first proposed him the so called Mobile School – he was fascinated with the idea, but challenged me with a lot of questions.

Second time, when I came to Corsica, to present the results of the coding project with, at the time, a doubtful future he was a bit disappointed, angry even. Therefore challenging me again, how to continue this initiative teaching coding skills to the kids.

I left worrying, but with a lesson learned: You should never have only plan A, but always also a plan B and C et cetera when presenting to Thomas. Thanks to that today we have more than 150 mobile schools and are training over 1.2 million children in digital skills across Southeast Asia.

The first time I ran into Thomas, I was just an 11-year-old boy, blissfully ignorant about the world beyond my neighborhood. Dariu, my partner in crime and one of my closest friends, was by my side.

Our mission was to craft a mind-blowing school presentation on China. A task easier said than done, especially for a couple of kids from Marseille. Enter Thomas – the reigning “China Whisperer” of our humble hometown. The man’s knowledge of the Far East was so vast, it made all books look like a local town guide. And the way he presented it was like watching an action-comedy blockbuster Sure, we were learning, but it was so engaging we hardly noticed. Our classroom turned into a stage, and we aced that presentation like rockstars, scoring the highest grade in the class.

Thomas didn’t just introduce me to the Great Wall and Kung Pao chicken, though. He gently nudged me towards entrepreneurship – showed me how to dream big, to weave work into the fabric of my life in a nourishing way, and to never stop fine-tuning my business acumen to look smart in front of the fabulous guests at his Corsican table. Heck, he even helped me tackle technical catastrophes, like defibrillating our unresponsive Wi-Fi and resurrecting the ghost printer in Porticcio.

Now, I’ve got a treasure chest full of tales, from designing websites to crisscrossing the globe – all thanks to my adventures with Thomas. Why did I follow him down these rabbit holes? Because each one was a golden ticket to the Willy Wonka factory of learning.

Thomas, an iconoclast man, and yet conservative, is the only man that I know in Corsica who is able to put plants where the locals would pour cement… He also represents my life’s struggle; campaigning for a beautiful Corsica, in tune with nature and still reconciled with the economy.

Like a withered vine, he arrived in Corsica and found a type of symbiosis in the youthful air that made of him a true Corsican.

Thank you, Thomas.

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.