Europe has some corpo-sized co-ops, and while they're not perfect they seem to function better than anything in the US.
It won't work in the US at scale, ever, because US business culture is fundamentally hierarchical, competitive, entitled, selfish, and extractive.
Cooperation at scale is a completely alien concept in the US. Expedient synergies can be workable, but free-wheeling open decision making to benefit customers is only viable in small companies. And often not even then.
So it's dog eat dog. If you're not one of the predators you're the prey.
"Being the boss" of any business that's heading for IPO becomes an attempt to avoid being prey - which implies becoming one of the predators, and being comfortable with that.
If you don't start there your investors will still drag you in that direction, and remove you if you're not willing.