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 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.

Glossary/Product Economist

Richard Ewing Frameworks

What is Product Economist?

Q: 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.

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

The Product Economist methodology recognizes that engineering is capital allocation, not just feature delivery. Every sprint is an investment decision. Every feature has ongoing maintenance costs. Every architecture choice has financial implications.

The Product Economist Doctrine holds four principles: Capital Allocation > Agile Theater, The Truth is in the P&L, Kill Zombies Ruthlessly, and Sovereignty Over Dependency.

Why It Matters

Traditional product management focuses on velocity and features. Product Economics focuses on financial returns. In an era of belt-tightening and AI cost pressures, the economic lens is essential for survival.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Product Economist?

A Product Economist treats every product decision as an economic decision, measuring ROIC, COGS efficiency, and technical debt in dollar terms rather than story points or velocity.