Wealth & Money Quote by Dean Kamen

"I'd rather lose my own money than someone else's" is the kind of line that pretends to be about virtue but is really about control. Coming from Dean Kamen, an inventor whose brand is high-stakes tinkering with real-world consequences, it reads less like thrift and more like an operating philosophy: if risk is inevitable, it should at least be self-authored.

The intent is practical and reputational at once. Practical, because outside capital comes with schedules, expectations, and the quiet pressure to optimize for the investor's horizon instead of the invention's logic. Reputational, because it frames failure as disciplined rather than reckless. Losing your own money signals you had skin in the game; losing someone else's suggests you used trust as fuel.

The subtext is a subtle critique of the venture ecosystem that celebrates disruption while often demanding predictable trajectories. Kamen's work sits in the messy middle where prototypes misbehave, timelines slip, and the most important breakthroughs look like expensive mistakes until they don't. Self-funding, or at least self-risking, buys the freedom to follow a weird idea past the point where a boardroom would cut it off. It also imposes a harsher honesty: you can't outsource the pain of being wrong.

Context matters because inventors trade in asymmetry. One success can justify a graveyard of dead ends, but only if you can survive the dead ends. Kamen's line is a warning and a flex: innovation isn't just creativity; it's accountability for the bill.