Drawing from clinical and organizational narcissism research, we develop a novel measure of narcissistic rhetoric, investigating its prevalence in a sample of 1863 crowdfunding campaigns. An experiment using 1800 observations further validates our measure and confirms our hypothesized inverted-U relationship between narcissistic rhetoric and crowdfunding performance. Leveraging social role theory, we explore sex, sexual orientation, and race as potential moderators of this relationship. Moderation tests reveal LGBTQ entrepreneurs generally yield greater performance when using narcissistic rhetoric than heterosexuals while racial minorities underperform Caucasians using narcissistic rhetoric. Our findings suggest successful crowdfunding campaigns must balance narcissistic rhetoric with entrepreneurs' perceived social roles. •Narcissistic rhetoric has an inverted-U relationship with crowdfunding performance.•We create a comprehensive measure of narcissistic rhetoric using content analysis.•Impact of narcissistic rhetoric is shaped by entrepreneurs' adherence to prevalent social roles.•Entrepreneur sex, sexual orientation, and race influence investor responses to narcissistic rhetoric.