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Comment by shinkim0914 | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

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.

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?

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.

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!

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

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!

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