
Show HN: S-1 Reader – IPO prospectuses that aren't eyesores - shinkim0914
http://www.s1reader.com
======
shinkim0914
Hi HN, I believe S-1's should be more widely read, but are intimidating to
first time readers. Here, I've taken Eventbrite's S-1, took only the most
essential sections (~1/5 of total text), and overlaid a simple WP template to
improve readability. Do you think it would be make sense for something like
this to exist for ALL S-1's?

Here's Eventbrite's original full S-1 for comparison:
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1475115/000119312518...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1475115/000119312518255960/d593770ds1.htm)

~~~
pbreit
Hmmm...my biggest fear reading this is that I'm not getting the official
document (and apparently I'm not...all the financials are missing!).

I personally find the original much easier to read and use. Jumping back and
forth in this viewer is jarring and lacks context.

~~~
shinkim0914
Good point! Navigation is definitely not easy in this version. I'd be looking
to a sticky table of contents widget on the side and/or a infinite scroll
feature in the next version.

------
docker_up
Sorry, I will be honest and say that there is nothing useful in what you have
provided. I don't even think you understand the end user. You have replaced a
single S-1 page with a bunch of links, and you don't even have the financial
numbers. That's probably the biggest reason why people look at the S-1. Not
including the S-1 financials means that you really don't understand the people
who consume them, which is a red flag.

Replacing sections with separate links, and forcing you to click around
doesn't make things better, it's actually unnecessary friction.

~~~
shinkim0914
Thank you for the feedback, you make very reasonable points. Here are a couple
thoughts!

1\. I'll be the first to admit that excluding the financials was largely due
to the lack of my web design experience – creating pretty tables on WP is
harder than I wish!

2\. I'll make a wild guess that 90% of the general public doesn't know how to
read an income statement. For the 10% of those who do, and read SEC documents
regularly, there are existing paid tools like BAMSEC that you can use to
improve the usability of the SEC website. BAMSEC has power features like
ability to download financial statements directly as Excel spreadsheets.

What I'd like to know is if there is an interested readership among the 90%
that are intellectually curious - HN readers, for example - and find the S-1
language readable and interesting, when presented without the baggage of 1)
navigating through the dense SEC EDGAR search system and 2) legal template
language that represents bulk of the S-1 doc.

~~~
docker_up
Your reasoning is not sound at all.

90% of the general public might know know how to read an income statement, but
90% of the general public is not interested in reading an S-1 no matter what
the format is. The vast majority are happy reading a Marketwatch synposis of
it.

The percentage of the general public who are actually interested in reading an
S-1 will be mostly interested in the financials.

Again, I believe this is because you don't understand who your end-user would
be, and who is actually interested in reading an S-1.

------
c-slice
I personally don't find this any more readable than the real S-1.
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1475115/000119312518...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1475115/000119312518255960/d593770ds1.htm)

The real S-1 has a clickable table of contents, is easier to navigate (doesn't
require back and forth clicking) and has more data (financials,
capitalization, voting structure, etc)

~~~
shinkim0914
True, this was not built with the seasoned S-1 reader in mind who already know
exactly what they are looking for in a S-1. And I agree the navigation is a
big problem with this version – it ought to be easier.

------
sfcguyus
If im honest this is difficult to read as a financial analyst. The original
document is easier to search and traverse. The idea you have to click through
things makes it very difficult to look for anything.

------
msrpotus
This is easy on the eyes but why not include the financial statements? Those
numbers are pretty important.

~~~
nsx147
Second this - I immediately look for the financials because it is usually the
first time they are being presented publicly

Cool project nonetheless!

~~~
shinkim0914
Thanks for the great points! I definitely went for "less is more" in this
iteration. Financials should be incorporated, but I didn't want to just dump
it on the casual reader who's not familiar with financial statements. I
believe there are really may be ~10 lines of numbers (revenue breakdown, gross
profit, operating cost line items, non-GAAP metrics) that deserve scrutiny in
many cases.

~~~
sabalaba
I would guess that most readers of S-1 statements are interested in the
balance sheet, P&L, and the cap table. Would love to see you provide a clean
summary of those three things with graphs and extra breakouts like gross
margin %.

------
ejobe
Couple of UX/IA things:

\- There's no hover effects on your links. This makes the top level links
(Business, Discussion + Analysis, and Letter from the Founders) look like
they're not clickable, especially because they're treated so differently than
the rest of the links.

\- Plus signs are often used to hide nested content, especially in navigation
trees like you have here. If these are simply links, they should look like
links.

\- Once you're in a section, there's no breadcrumbs or active styling in the
header. Because there are so many links, it's hard to know where you are or
create a mental model of the space.

\- It might be helpful to add previous and next navigation once you're inside
one of the nested pages, instead of requiring people to go back out to the
main page.

------
zekevermillion
Very cool! I remember circa 2007 using some awful service for S-1 queries at a
law firm, I think we paid like $250 per search. The same data was available
for free, but this service presented it in slightly more readable form. Given
our billing rate, this expenditure somehow made sense (or we were able to
justify it anyway).

------
sytelus
It would be great if you can also generate TLDR; for each section and put it
at the start. There are several automated text summarizers out there to
experiment with, for example,
[https://www.textcompactor.com/](https://www.textcompactor.com/)

