2 main differences:
1) your customer's requirements are pure (usually) - "please add a frammel button so I can manage my widgets better". Your boss's requirements are less so - "please satisfy corporate by attending this compliance training".
2) you can fire any customers who you don't like. Not so your boss.
I know what you mean, but I think there's an alternate way to look at this.
Every time I've moved jobs, I really look at it as firing my boss. The process is pretty much the same as firing someone:
* First, I voiced my concerns and gave my boss a chance to improve.
* When he wasn't improving, I began searching the job market to find his replacement (my future boss).
* After a few interviews, I found a replacement that was a really good fit for the role of "my boss".
* I let my old boss know that his performance had not improved enough, and I was forced to let him go, but I wished him all the best in his future endeavors.
* I gave my new boss a start date, and so far everything is going great.
Compliance training is about legal requirement. A little extrapolation suggests it is going to be things that your bosses are only asking you to consider because they are legally mandated. If they were going to be considerations anyway, why mandate them?
A lot of stupid things businesses do are to satisfy legal requirements that the business thinks is stupid. That one isn't the boss, it is the government.
That's the thing -- oftentimes your Boss thinks that X is a "legal requirement". When really it's "so-and-so is bugging me to cram this down your throats saying something about 'legal' and I'm too busy to even bother googling to find out whether it's really so. Plus even if I did some basic research I might have to actually think about it for a minute or two - and you know how much I hate that. So to save myself time, I think I'll just cram it down your throats."
My favorite X in this category: drug testing. (Contrary to popular belief, it's almost never an actual legal requirement - even if your company is getting state or federal funds.)
Remember that solo founders are widely encouraged to incorporate in Delaware just because it's the least legal risk. One state! Out of fifty, and several non-state entities! There's no legal requirement, and you can absolutely incorporate in your home state or many other places, but the advice is that if you want to focus on what your business does best, don't spend time thinking about any states' corporate law other than Delaware's, which is well-explored. If that's the bar, basically all other forms of compliance are well above it.
I get that good hackers have an instinct to ask "Why?" or "Really?" at every step and to understand the whole system, and I have it too, but one thing I've learned with experience is you need to train yourself to put a stopping point on "Why?" if you want to get anything done at your current level of descent. You absolutely can go arbitrarily deep, nobody is goin to stop you, and there are all sorts of fences that have no reason for existing, but you have a limited amount of time to do whatever work you want to do and show results. Do you want to build the next great social network, or the next great form of corporate structure? You can absolutely do either - you can't do both.
(One caveat: there are a few things that are legal requirements or near enough thereto that only apply when you have more than a few employees. If you're a solo founder, you presumably can't create a hostile work environment for yourself, for instance. However, if you're a solo founder pursuing B2B deals and having meetings with companies, it might be worth being aware of what sorts of things your target companies consider hostile work environments and would cause them to not invite you back for the sake of their legal risk - and that's even more about the standard corporate view of the law than the law itself. So, you may not be able to get away ignoring these conventions even as a solo founder, after all.)
Despite 400+ opinions, the pull on the team is one way: client needs.
My previous Companies has outside money, board, etc. That's three directions of pull.
We've saved a lot of time that way on investor management but our growth was limited by cash-on-hand.
Not-Compatoble request is a bit harder. But, with like 10+ prior years in consultant I'm generally able to direct thing to a multiple compatible solution.
Lots of research and customer development play for that.
Was there a concrete point at which you and your co-founder agreed to accept a minority stake and therefore give up absolute control? Was it a hard call to make or, already then, a relief because of the employee accountability?
The board of directors is legally responsible for running the company, in practice through major company decisions and scrutiny, so you can take some relief from that if you're a CxO doing what you think best "day to day" but not entirely sure you really know by yourself. Your board will get the legal blame if it goes seriously wrong and you've kept them sufficiently informed and involved in key decisions.
But you can still have a majority ownership stake while appointing a board. In doing so, you keep ultimate control (as shareholders) but you won't often exercise it.
Having ultimate control might change the social dynamics, but shareholders are not responsible for the company, the board of directors is and they should know it. Shareholders have the power to pass resolutions which effectively override directors, but most of the time they don't. Even if they do, it's up to the directors to figure out how to do what the shareholders want in a responsible and defensible way.
Anyone comparing a customer to a boss has had the luxury of never having a terrible boss.