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.

Guides/Engineering Efficiency

Engineering Efficiency Blueprint

How elite organizations achieve $3.2M revenue per engineer while others struggle at $200K. Covers APER benchmarking, DORA metrics, team topology, build vs buy economics, and budget optimization.

35+ linked glossary terms · 40 min read · For CTOs, Engineering Directors

Measurement Foundations

The metrics that actually matter for engineering output

Revenue Per Engineer DORA Metrics Feature Velocity Engineering Allocation Maintenance Load

Team Economics

How team structure drives or destroys efficiency

Conways Law Team Topologies Cognitive Load Platform Engineering Developer Experience (DevEx)

Build vs Buy

Decision frameworks for make-or-buy choices

Build vs. Buy Decision Total Cost Of Ownership Vendor Lock-In Api Economy Integration Debt

Budget Optimization

Getting more from your R&D investment

Rd Capitalization Innovation Tax Engineering Roi Technical Debt Ratio (TDR)Sprint Velocity

Scaling Patterns

Efficiency patterns for growth-stage organizations

Microservices Monolith Architecture Event-Driven Architecture Ci Cd Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Tools for Measuring Efficiency

APER Calculator

Calculate your Adjusted Product Economic Return — revenue per engineer adjusted for debt.

EV-SE Calculator

Enterprise Value per Software Engineer — how much value each engineer creates.

Get Expert Help

Richard Ewing advises engineering leaders on efficiency optimization. R&D Capital Audits identify where your investment is being wasted — and how to reclaim it.

Book an R&D Capital Audit →

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