My opinion: take whatever idea you have for a great company, but make it a non-profit.
Other than maybe e-mail, wikipedia is the best thing to come out of the internet. And its creator may not be a billionaire oligarch, but he has a GREAT life. If you can set aside a need to be filthy, needlessly, pointlessly rich, then maybe turn your next idea for a social network or a communication platform or whatever into a non-profit. It's amazing what types of products can be built for this world when you're building for the world, and not the shareholders.
This is the dream. OpenStreetMap is another great example of such an idea. To take it a step further, I'd encourage setting the non-profit up as a worker's cooperative. Just imagine all of the big companies out there organized as open-source, co-operative non-profits. We could kill a lot of redundant work, retain people's privacy, and really empower the employees of these companies to ensure the company works on things they believe in.
I'm not sure about resources for starting a co-op outside the US, but here are some resources I've found on how to start a co-op. Web searching will find more.
I talked briefly with this co-op whose set up in Europe and seems to have members from all over, so they might provide good insight: https://camplight.net/
Also, talking to nonprofit founders, I've heard that starting a non-profit yourself can be pain in the ass. However, you can essentially outsource the management of the nonprofit to another nonprofit via 'fiscal sponsorship.' Web searching for that will bring up more details. For example, http://grayarea.org/incubator/fiscal-sponsorship/. I met the founder of this organization that started providing fiscal sponsorship recently as well: http://blog.hacker.fund/fs/
And finally, there are actually some co-ops that are trying to make this process easier. For example, this co-op alternative to kickstarter: https://snowdrift.coop/ and this co-op that makes software for making decisions within co-ops easier: https://www.loomio.org/
There is absolutely nothing inherently morally superior in making it a not-for-profit. Lots of not-for-profits have serious problems. I wish making life better were as simple as "well, just make your business X format and you are suddenly on the moral high ground!"
You should not make your business idea a not-for-profit out of the idea that this is somehow inherently morally superior. That is a bad reason to do so. Some types of work or goals are better served by a specific model. Some things are best served by having it done as a public good by the government, such as police and fire. Some things are well served by the not-for-profit model. Some things are well served by a for-profit model. Some things are well served by a co-op model. None of those is inherently morally better for all goals all the time.
Insomuch as I never proved using a not-for-profit is best for many of the use cases that we are currently using the business model for, you also didn't in any way demonstrate that we are doing it correctly. I think Wikipedia alone offers great evidence that we are underutilizing the nonprofit model. What evidence to you see for companies remaining moral in the face of shareholder pressure for profits?
These structures are not inherently moral as you said, but they do offer distinct incentive structures for their owners and employees. And there are plenty of ideas today that get called business ideas that could easily be better crafted outside of a corporation.
Corporation and business are not synonymous. You can own and run a business that is not incorporated, thus there are no shareholders. In fact, most businesses are not incorporated.
Other than maybe e-mail, wikipedia is the best thing to come out of the internet. And its creator may not be a billionaire oligarch, but he has a GREAT life. If you can set aside a need to be filthy, needlessly, pointlessly rich, then maybe turn your next idea for a social network or a communication platform or whatever into a non-profit. It's amazing what types of products can be built for this world when you're building for the world, and not the shareholders.