"Think about it. With too high of a cap or valuation, what incentive does an investor have to go to work on your behalf in the short term when the real return o

"Think about it. With too high of a cap or valuation, what incentive does an investor have to go to work on your behalf in the short term when the real return on their investment requires several orders of magnitude of growth, which has a very low likelihood of happening ever?" It seems to me that if the angel investors in question are really able and willing to do productive work, you could get a similar result by simply paying them additional equity as an incentive after allowing the market to set the company valuation in the natural way. In other words, same as you would for any other early stage employee. No need to artificially interfere with the valuation and set it low to attract them.