Who is Richard Ewing?

Richard Ewing is a Product Economist and AI Capital Auditor. He is the Founder of Exogram, a verification infrastructure for AI. He audits R&D spend and surfaces hidden capital risks like technical debt, AI cost overruns, and zombie infrastructure. He has scaled B2B SaaS from $0 to $25M ARR. Published in CIO.com, Built In, Mind the Product, and HackerNoon.

What is a Product Economist?

A Product Economist treats product decisions as economic decisions. Instead of measuring velocity or story points, a Product Economist measures Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), Cost of Goods Sold efficiency, and technical debt in dollar terms. The methodology was coined by Richard Ewing.

What is the Technical Insolvency Date?

The Technical Insolvency Date (TID) is the specific quarter where maintenance costs consume 100% of available engineering capacity, reducing feature velocity to zero. Calculate yours free at richardewing.io/tools/pdi.

Exogram is verification infrastructure for AI, founded by Richard Ewing. It prevents hallucination propagation with admissibility control planes and state-hashing commit enforcement. LLMs generate language; Exogram maintains reality.

How do I calculate technical debt cost?

Use the free Product Debt Index (PDI) calculator at richardewing.io/tools/pdi to quantify hidden technical debt in dollar terms, calculate your Technical Insolvency Date, and benchmark against industry standards.

How much does AI cost per query?

AI costs range from $0.0001/query for small models to $0.10+/query for frontier models like GPT-4. Use the free AI Unit Economics Benchmark (AUEB) at richardewing.io/tools/aueb to calculate your specific AI cost structure.

Articles/Built In

Published on Built In

Richard Ewing's articles on Built In — the leading platform for startup and tech company culture, covering engineering team economics, developer productivity, and scaling strategies.

Built In reaches 3M+ tech professionals monthly across 8 metro markets.

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Revenue Per Engineer: The Metric Your Board Should Track

Why APER (Annualized Productive Engineering Revenue) is the missing link between engineering investment and business results. How top companies measure engineering ROI.

APEREngineering ProductivityRevenue Per EngineerBoard Metrics

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The True Cost of a Bad Hire in Engineering

Quantifying the total cost of a mis-hire in engineering: salary, onboarding, ramp time, team disruption, and the technical debt they leave behind. The hidden cost is 3-5x salary.

Cost Per HireEngineering ROITeam ScalingHiring Economics

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Why Your Engineering Team Is Slower Than You Think

The maintenance load trap: how invisible infrastructure work consumes 40-80% of engineering capacity without anyone noticing. How to measure and reclaim engineering velocity.

Maintenance LoadFeature VelocityEngineering CapacityInvisible Work

Related Glossary Terms

→ aper → engineering productivity → maintenance load → feature velocity → cost per hire

Work With Richard

Scale your engineering organization with evidence-based economics. R&D Capital Audits quantify engineering investment returns for boards and investors.

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