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.

What is Revenue Recognition (ASC 606)?

Revenue recognition is the accounting principle that determines when and how revenue is recorded on financial statements. For SaaS companies, ASC 606 (the US standard) requires that revenue be recognized when performance obligations are satisfied — typically ratably over the subscription period.

Key implications for SaaS: a $120K annual contract signed in January is not $120K of January revenue. It's $10K/month recognized over 12 months. Billings (cash collected) and revenue (recognized) are different numbers.

This distinction matters for financial reporting, tax planning, and metrics. A company can have strong billings (lots of cash coming in from new annual contracts) but modest recognized revenue (because the revenue is spread over the contract term).

For product economists, revenue recognition also affects R&D capitalization. Under ASC 350-40, certain software development costs can be capitalized rather than expensed — but only costs incurred during the application development stage, not planning or maintenance.

Why It Matters

Misunderstanding revenue recognition leads to poor financial planning, incorrect metrics, and potentially fraudulent reporting. For SaaS leaders, the distinction between billings, recognized revenue, and deferred revenue is fundamental.

Frequently Asked Questions