cat origin.txt
Origin story
New! I’m launching Dead Men Ship No Code, a fundraiser for Seattle’s Resilient Hearts Animal Sanctuary in the run-up to re:Invent 2026. 🏴☠️
If you’ve worked with me at Amazon, visited one of my offices or joined a Zoom call, you may have spotted the pirate flag behind me. I first hung one up in 2023, at the start of this AI renaissance. It was a reminder to our teams to think and act like small, agile pirate crews: move quickly, explore, change course as we learn, and bring a little swashbuckling spirit to the work.
Since then, pirate-flag emojis have become a recurring feature in comments, and our internal team Slack room is currently called the Pir-ai-ate Crew. You may groan.
Now I wanted a way to share some of that spirit with you all, while raising money to help rescue dogs here in Seattle.
You can choose a shirt or hoodie in one of three designs: a flaming skull, Blackbeard’s flag or a very good pirate dog. Shirts start at $30. The higher tiers include signed hardback copies of my book, which has a nautical theme of its own, and a handful of signed pirate flags. I’ll sign one of those flags in person with its new owner at re:Invent.
I’m donating the books, and all profits go to Resilient Hearts Animal Sanctuary to support puppy rescue.
The artwork comes from real, runnable pirate ASCII art. You can explore it in your terminal or browser, and I’ve included free animated pirate scenes and screensavers for macOS and Linux, with installation instructions on the site. Have a play!
If you’re coming to re:Invent, I’d love to see you wearing yours around the event, especially at my keynote on Thursday morning.
Choose your loot and join the crew at deadmenshipnocode.com.
Matt Wood mza