I think the employees are the things that bring responsibility. Customers come and go, and so long as you have a good product they'll accumulate over time. If you make it a primary goal, you can get your product to the point where it doesn't generate much in the way of customer service burden. I field maybe one email per week per 500 paying customers.

The added advantage of a low customer service product is that you don't need to hire employees. (Which, I agree, would add all that responsibility you talk about).

I disagree that you need to be an outlier to do this. There's nothing particularly special about the formula, and there are several people doing it here. It's not really a sense of responsibility that's lacking. It's the actual responsibilities. Most weeks I just don't have that much to do.