Show HN: S-1 Reader – IPO prospectuses that aren't eyesores

http://www.s1reader.com

by shinkim0914 • 8 years ago

55 21 8 years ago

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...

projectramo• 8 years ago

Great. Ideally you’d be able to auto convert any S-1 into this form. Or any 10k etc field for the government.

Eventually: data extraction!

existencebox• 8 years ago

I do a good bit of financial/news scraping. I'd find this useful, as the OP is clearly a much cleaner read; so thanks for the demo! However I was always of the impression that large portions of what may be important data came in relatively unstructured and one needed to read the S1 with an eye for certain topics or inflection points? Do you find this to be true/do you think there are any heuristics to expose critical segments in a less supervised fashion?

shinkim09147• 8 years ago

Thank you for the comment! As an ex-investment banker I can tell you that not all sections are not given equal amount thought when putting the doc together – large swaths of the doc are often legal template language. My top heuristics are 1) focus on the "Business" and "MD&A" section 2) look for the non-gaap metrics (since they are often internal KPIs the company follows to measure performance). Let me know if you have more specific things you're looking for.

segmondy• 8 years ago

Why do you believe this? Is there research or just your opinion?

shinkim09147• 8 years ago

I don't have research, but I have found that most people outside of the financial services industry feel that they don't have the training or qualification to read a SEC document. The SEC EDGAR website's UI and the length of the document are not exactly welcoming either. Yet, I believe most key sections of the S-1 are very readable, and the folks who put it together have put in many hours so that people who are introduced to the company's story for the first time have a easy time digesting the materials. That's why I believe they have the potential to be read more widely!

pbreit• 8 years ago

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.

shinkim09147• 8 years ago

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.

msrpotus• 8 years ago

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

nsx147• 8 years ago

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

Cool project nonetheless!

shinkim09147• 8 years ago

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.

zekevermillion• 8 years ago

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).

c-slice• 8 years ago

I personally don't find this any more readable than the real S-1. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1475115/000119312518...

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)

shinkim09147• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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.

docker_up2• 8 years ago

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.

shinkim09147• 8 years ago

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_up2• 8 years ago

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.

sytelus• 8 years ago

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/

ejobe• 8 years ago

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.

Show HN: S-1 Reader – IPO prospectuses that aren't eyesores

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