CSSO Speaker Series: Tim Weiss
Tim Weiss
Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London
Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley
Date: Friday, January 16, 2026
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Bronfman building, room 245
Abstract
Scholars are increasingly interested in studying how entrepreneurs employ deception. Research in cultural entrepreneurship specifically looks at the cultural work involved in deceiving audiences through the dramatization of entrepreneurial stories. Yet, we argue that this rather narrow focus, as well as the analysis of antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurial fraud among scholars of organizational wrongdoing, fall short in capturing how entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception鈥攅mploying deception to defraud audiences. Specifically, we lack an understanding of the cultural and organizing work involved in criminal deception. To advance a theory of criminal deception at the culture-organizing interface, we inductively analyze court data of Silicon Valley ventures, and their entrepreneurs prosecuted for fraud between 2000-2023. Our findings reveal a process of fa莽ading through which entrepreneurs construct, perform, and protect illusory appearances鈥攆a莽ades that project high-growth venture performance to audiences while masking ventures鈥� actual, subpar performance. We identify three forms of fa莽ading鈥攕urface, reinforced, and deep fa莽ading鈥攖hat are contingent on the severity of the expectation-reality gap that entrepreneurs face and the nature of the audiences they must convince. Our theoretical framework captures how the level of sophistication in fa莽ading corresponds to widening expectation-reality gaps, wherein entrepreneurs detach the venture鈥檚 externally projected appearance from its actual operational reality. We make contributions to the literatures on cultural entrepreneurship, organizational wrongdoing, and the social effects of entrepreneurship.
About Tim Weiss
Tim Weiss is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London. His research programme applies an organizational theory lens to studying entrepreneurship phenomena with a specific focus on the changing nature of entrepreneurship and its social effects. Leveraging qualitative methods (i.e., extensive fieldwork, ethnography, and archival work), Tim studies phenomena such as collocating, identical car repair firms in Kenya; experimentation on gig workers; and fraud court cases against Silicon Valley start-ups.
Tim is a founding member of the Interdisciplinary Network for Technology and Entrepreneurship Research in Africa which supports emerging research talent who focus on studying African economies and of the annual Entrepreneurship & Society conference.
Before joining the faculty at Imperial College, Tim was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Work, Technology & Organization in Stanford鈥檚 Management Science and Engineering Department. He holds a Doctorate and Master鈥檚 degree from a start-up academic institution, Zeppelin University in Germany, and a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of Vienna.
