"Well, if you want to improve the lifes of millions of people, your company has to make significants profits and grow strongly." Wikipedia? Mozilla? Ushahidi?

"Well, if you want to improve the lifes of millions of people, your company has to make significants profits and grow strongly." Wikipedia? Mozilla? Ushahidi? "That's just reality, if you can't pay your employees, they will work for somebody else and all your idealism doesn't help there." If you can pay them enough to satisfy their utility and basic needs/wants, people will work for you. Again, see the examples above. You should try contributing open source software to non-profits. Maybe you will see things in a different light and while a cat-photo sharing app worth $50 million may not reach people in Mogadishu (who really don't give a shit about an "angry" cat), your health/water-finder/medicine app will reach the NPO workers who indirectly assist millions.