'The Best Way to Keep the Devil at the Door Is to Be Rich.'

But if Luczywo was able to steer Gazeta Wyborcza 's editorial direction smoothly, she also knew her limitations well enough to understand that she was at a loss when it came to the newspaper's business affairs. So, back in 1990, when her old friend, Rapaczynski, showed up in Warsaw, Luczywo immediately began lobbying her to join the paper. "We needed her," she says. "At the time, we were looking for people who knew how to do things, and Wanda knew how a company should be run. That was a skill we needed."

In fact today, Agora is known for being a well-organized and tightly run business -- one that provides analysts with clear, detailed reports and that has well-informed, knowledgeable executives. That reputation, in large part, was earned by the work of Rapaczynski. Dressed in an elegant linen pantsuit, looking every bit the American executive, Rapaczynski recalls how she found Agora in disarray when she joined the company full time in 1992. Working closely with Piotr Niemczycki, the two worked to change the culture. "There was this horrible inheritance from communism, a certain passivity, where people would think, Why get active? " she says. "In the communist system, there was no reward for getting things done. There was no reward for competency, so people weren't motivated."

It was Rapaczynski who helped lure Cox in as an investor in 1993, and that relationship has proved immensely valuable to Agora. Cox agreed to be a passive investor and gave Agora the cash that it needed to buy its first printing presses. In 1995, when Agora decided to expand its media empire into radio, Rapaczynski was able to turn to Cox as a partner. Cox, which owns several local radio stations in the United States, helped draw up a business plan, sent over some of its radio consultants, and became a minority investor. After conducting market research in Poland, among other countries, Agora ended up following Cox's strategy -- investing almost exclusively in local radio and creating heavily formatted stations.

It was a radical move in Poland, where, at the time, most radio stations were national and all stations were a mix of news and music. But after studying other markets and learning about Polish tastes, Rapaczynski decided to specialize in so-called oldies music -- music from the 1960s through the 1990s -- so that the stations could target Polish listeners between the ages of 25 and 45, the most demographically desirable group to advertisers. Also, that focus enabled Agora to leverage its strength in local markets. The strategy was classic Agora: First see what works abroad, then adapt it to Polish tastes. Call it the "fast follower principle." "I had a boss at Citibank who used to say, 'I never want to be the first. I just want to be the best,' " Rapaczynski says. "And I agree with that. When I go on a path, I don't want to be the one with the machete clearing the way. If you go in too early, you just burn money. If you go in too late, you have too much competition. We're not afraid to be innovators. But we believe that you should study what others have done and then benefit from their experience."

Wise to the Web

Agora's 1999 IPO was successful beyond its leaders' wildest dreams. It raised $93 million, which the company is using to construct a campus-style office complex and new printing facilities, and it has made many people at Gazeta Wyborcza rich -- which makes Luczywo and Rapaczynski quite proud. "Isn't it great poetic justice that the people who lived for years on their ideals now have money?" says Rapaczynski.

But she admits that becoming a publicly traded company has also brought new scrutiny and pressures, making her relationship with Lucyzwo more tense. "You can say that you aren't going to worry about what the press and the analysts say, but you do so at your own peril," says Rapaczynski.

A case in point: In January, when Agora announced that it was going to spend $10 million over the next three years developing an Internet portal, its stock tripled. Like most of eastern Europe, Poland has no real Internet economy (no one even bothers keeping track of Internet-advertising expenditures in Poland), but suddenly, the country was experiencing its own dotcom fever. Then, when the U.S. market crashed, taming the exuberance for all things dotcom, Poland's market had a minicrash of its own, and analysts became skeptical. Suddenly, Agora -- whose stock at the time was a healthy 104 zlotys per share -- was one of those companies facing questions. Was $10 million really enough to build an Internet portal? (Luczywo now estimates that the investment may be as much as $30 million, not including advertising or promotion.) What was taking Agora so long to launch, anyway?