If you do a startup because you think it has high marginal utility, and you won't keep going when the going gets tough, you're doing it for the wrong reason, and you should save everyone a lot of trouble by not doing it in the first place.
Maybe there's an inferential distance problem here--as far as I'm aware, the most ethical thing to do, is to make tons and tons of money, in a way that isn't that bad for the world (selling people virtual goods in an addictive casual game will do as an example), and then donate a large sum of it to efficient charities. The role model for this is Bill Gates--he ran Microsoft (a company that some revile, but which isn't that bad in any global sense) until it paid him out a ton of money, and then he is using that money to prevent malaria and so forth.
By comparison, creating a company that will both make money and do good in the world is not nearly as efficient for actually doing good in the world.
it's not mostly about ethics, but it is about values and meaning. the startup someone starts for purely economic reasons is worth zip, because the founder will falter when the going gets tough. economic incentives are significant, but if they were all that mattered there would be a lot less poetry, and a lot less war.
So what is the path to changing the world, if not by spending billions of dollars? And how does one get access to billions of dollars, if not by starting a massively-profitable company?
Are you saying that if my "meaning" is derived from, say, extending the human lifespan, then starting a company that tries to do that--and fails (because extending the human lifespan is a public good nobody wants to pay for)--is more meaningful than creating some kind of SocialMobileLocal juggernaut, and then spending the money it generates to fix the problem for real?
To me, that just sounds like impatience and an unwillingness to look at the big picture. A startup itself can be a schlep, to achieve something greater.
Make a list of the people who changed the world the most in the last couple of generations. There were many paths, most of which did not involve those people spending billions of dollars. No one ever became the best at anything because they were motivated by money.
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather inspire them to long for the infinite immensity of the sea."
