Question 1

Who is Richard Ewing?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 2

What is a Product Economist?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 3

What is the Technical Insolvency Date?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 4

What is Exogram?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 5

How do I calculate technical debt cost?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 6

How much does AI cost per query?

Accepted Answer

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.

Dimension	APER	Jellyfish
Core Question	"How much revenue does each engineer generate?"	"How are engineers spending their time?"
Primary Audience	CFOs, investors, board members	VPs of Engineering, Engineering Managers
Economic Output	Revenue per engineer ratio with industry benchmarks	Time allocation reports and project costs
Data Source	Revenue data + headcount (calculator-based)	JIRA, Git, calendar integrations
Implementation	5-minute free calculator	Weeks of integration and onboarding
Team Visibility	Organization-level economics	Team-level & individual allocation
PE/Board Readability	One number + benchmark comparison	Detailed dashboards (too complex for boards)
Pricing	Free calculator + advisory	Enterprise pricing ($50K-$200K/year)

APER vs Jellyfish

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