Charbel A. Zeaiter has spent close to 30 years building things. A deli in Glebe that became a Sydney destination. A cafe in Redfern that grew into one of TimeOut's Top 5 in Sydney. A subversive streetwear label that landed in Vice Australia's first edition. An environmental education venture that raised half a million through crowdfunding.

And then there's Academy Xi, Australia's first school for practical UX, service design, and digital skills, which he founded in 2013 and exited in 2019, and which famously stood its ground when General Assembly sent a cease and desist from New York.

Today he runs Velvet Onion, a human-centred product innovation studio in Sydney, and writes The Innovators, Brand Mavericks, Young Founders, Psychonauts, XD 4.0, and Los Originales across the Faster Zebra ecosystem. He also writes mythical and sometimes absurd fictional brands under his own name and non-fiction under the banner of The Unfuckery.

Faster Zebra is the distillation of that work. It exists because building a business is one of the most creative acts available to a human being, and because the person who does the building is changed by the building. The zebra is the deliberate antithesis of the unicorn: profitable, sustainable, purpose-led, and entirely real.

Charbel built the Kits, the playbooks, and the workbooks he wished he'd had when starting out. They're for the next generation of builders, and for anyone willing to do the uncomfortable, specific, hard-to-fake work that most processes are designed to avoid. Good things come to those who make.