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.

Guides

The Complete Guide to Technical Debt

AI Economics Hub — The Cost of Intelligence