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.

Glossary/Section 230

Compliance & Regulation

1 min read

What is Section 230?

TL;DR

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996) provides legal immunity to online platforms for content posted by users.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996) provides legal immunity to online platforms for content posted by users. The key provision: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

Section 230 enables: Social media platforms (not liable for user posts), Review sites (not liable for user reviews), and Marketplace platforms (not liable for seller content). Without Section 230, every platform would face crippling liability for user-generated content.

AI implications: Section 230's application to AI-generated content is actively debated. When an AI chatbot generates harmful content, is the platform protected by Section 230? Courts are currently divided. The distinction between "hosting user content" (protected) and "generating content" (potentially not protected) is a key legal frontier.

Why It Matters

Section 230 is the legal foundation of the internet economy. Changes to Section 230 would fundamentally reshape how platforms operate, what content they allow, and their financial exposure to litigation.

Frequently Asked Questions