Tips on Reading an S-1?

Just out of curiosity as a PE professional without banking experience, I've always wondered how experienced public market investors approach looking at S-1s and how it compares to us looking at CIMs

A few areas I’d love your thoughts on:

  1. What are the most common tricks/dupes you look for in S-1s that non-experienced professional might not think about?
  2. Which red flags tend to matter most in practice vs. theoretically?
  3. What frameworks do you use to evaluate governance, management, voting structure, and alignment?
  4. What separates management teams that compound value post-IPO from those optimized primarily for the offering process?
  5. Are there particular sections of the filing that consistently contain the highest signal-to-noise?

Just for my own learning, I would also appreciate i) any examples of particularly well-written or revealing historical S-1s, ii) recommendations of substacks or writings of investors have been good at dissecting IPO filings, or iii) any lessons learned from IPOs that initially screened well but ultimately disappointed

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