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/HackerNoon

Published on HackerNoon

Richard Ewing's articles on HackerNoon — the leading platform for developer-focused content, covering AI agent economics, open-source sustainability, and technical debt strategy for startups.

HackerNoon reaches 4M+ developers and technical decision-makers monthly.

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The Economics of AI Agents: What Nobody Tells You About Cost

Breaking down the real cost of running AI agents in production: token economics, orchestration overhead, and the 5-50x cost multiplier of agentic workflows vs. simple chatbots.

AI AgentsToken EconomicsAgentic WorkflowAI COGS

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Open Source Is Not Free: The Hidden Costs of OSS Dependencies

The true total cost of open-source dependencies: security vulnerability monitoring, license compliance, upgrade maintenance, and the risk of abandoned projects.

Open SourceDependency DebtSupply Chain SecurityLicense Compliance

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Technical Debt for Startups: When to Ignore It and When to Pay

A stage-appropriate guide to technical debt management. Pre-PMF: ignore most of it. Post-PMF: classify and prioritize. Pre-Series B: quantify in dollars for investors.

Technical DebtStartup StrategySeries FundingVC Due Diligence

Related Glossary Terms

→ agentic workflow → ai cogs → technical debt → vc due diligence → dependency debt

Work With Richard

From AI agent cost modeling to technical debt quantification — get the frameworks used by PE firms and Fortune 500 companies.

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