Meet the founder

Charbel A. Zeaiter

Building companies since 1988, and building the people who build them.

Founder-educator. Founded Academy Xi and sold his stake for a seven-figure sum. More than three decades building across hospitality, retail, design, streetwear, technology and education. He became multilingual in business the only way you can, by building. Now building Faster Zebra.

Built, sold, and occasionally sued.

Most résumés list jobs. This one lists a seven-figure exit, a cafe Time Out loved, a streetwear label in Vice, and two cease and desist letters from global giants, one of whom lost a trademark they'd held for nearly a century in the fight that followed. One operator, many industries. Biggest first.

• Academy Xi · 2013 to 2019Australia's first UX and Service Design courses and one of its first practical UX and innovation schools. He founded it, trained thousands, raised over $1 million in a Seed round, and a $2.25 million Series A, and stood his ground when General Assembly came after him with a cease and desist from New York.

  He sold his stake in 2019 for seven figures, from something he'd built from nothing but a vision and a market need. It remains one of his proudest creations.

• Alt Saints · 2020From serial founder to cereal founder. An environmental venture he raised over half a million dollars for, ranged in supermarkets as a cereal brand. It pivoted into a tech and collectibles project that became the seed of Momo & Yeti, Dino Loco and Kith9. He's finalising the screenplays for Momo & Yeti. The Alt Saints venture collapsed publicly, and Faster Zebra grew out of the wreckage.
• Velvet Onion · 2001, revived 2013 His design and innovation agency, now Velvet Onion & Friends. Five challenger brands for IAG, Australia's largest insurer. OneShift, its first client, grown 3,800% and later sold for eight figures. A media engine that made $2 million in its first year for one of Australia's largest independent media companies. Velvet Onion Academy launched from it, and became Academy Xi.
• Moose General Store · Redfern, 2010His cafe that Time Out named one of the five best in Sydney, known for killer brownies and boozy marmalades, fig and rum jam or gin and tonic marmalade, and a granola line that picked a fight with Sanitarium over the word "granola". He and other makers took it to court and won, breaking a trademark the company had held for nearly a century when the court ruled the word had become everyday language.
• The Love Project · 2003A subversive, politically charged streetwear label he started with his brother during the Iraq war, that landed in Vice Australia's first edition and reached the best stores in Sydney and Melbourne.
• Swiss Deli, Glebe · 1988His first business. A rundown shopfront that became a destination people crossed Sydney for, and where he first wrote a story-card for every cheese, and became Lindt's largest retailer in the Southern Hemisphere, until David Jones noticed.

The skill was never the sector. It's how you read a problem, frame it, build the answer, and make it hold up commercially. That's the thing Faster Zebra hands forward.

Selected press, talks and conversations

More than three decades tends to leave a trail.

Also writes

Stories and provocations.

Beyond Faster Zebra, Charbel writes fiction under Febble Flim & Family, including a six-volume urban fantasy and the worlds of Dino Loco and Kith9, and non-fiction under The Unfuckery.