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/Unit Economics

SaaS Metrics & Finance

What is Unit Economics?

Unit economics measures the direct revenues and costs associated with a particular business unit — typically a customer, transaction, or product unit. In SaaS, unit economics focuses on Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Lifetime Value (LTV), and the LTV:CAC ratio.

Healthy SaaS unit economics have: LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 or higher, CAC payback period under 18 months, and gross margins above 70%. When these metrics are healthy, scaling the business generates increasing returns.

For AI products, unit economics are more complex because AI features have significant variable costs (compute, API calls, inference). Richard Ewing's AI Unit Economics Benchmark (AUEB) tool helps companies calculate the true unit economics of AI features, including the Cost of Predictivity.

Why It Matters

Unit economics determine whether your business model works at scale. Positive unit economics mean every new customer adds value. Negative unit economics mean growth accelerates losses. Many AI products fail because their unit economics are negative.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are unit economics?

Unit economics measures the profit or loss generated by a single unit of your business (usually one customer). In SaaS: LTV (lifetime value) minus CAC (customer acquisition cost).