Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Here’s one way to play catch up in the competitive streaming music market: preinstall your app on millions of Android handsets. That’s what Google will now be doing with YouTube Music. The company announced today the app will come preinstalled on all new devices launching with Android 10 as well as Android 9, including its own Pixel series of smartphones.

The move comes at a time when the company’s music strategy is in need of change.

Since the launch of YouTube Music in November 2015, Google has operated two separate music services — the other being Google Play Music, launched in 2011. To add to the confusion, YouTube also offered a subscription tier, originally called YouTube Red and rebranded later to YouTube Premium, which would provide access to both Google Play Music and YouTube Music. Plus, Google Play’s subscribers would also receive access to YouTube Premium. Oh, and as of last May, Google also allowed you to buy YouTube Music separately, if you’d prefer.

Did you follow all that?

Okay, sure, this wasn’t as bad as Google’s bizarre messaging app strategy, but it was still a mess.

This April, Google finally confirmed that it would replace Google Play Music with YouTube Music, explaining that the closure of Google Play’s Artist Hub was a part of a broader strategy to merge the two music services.

But despite today’s news that YouTube Music is being added to the list of preinstalled apps that ship with Android, and is now the new default, the Google Play Music shutdown has not yet occurred.

Instead, the company says that Google Play Music listeners with Android 10 devices can continue to use the service by downloading the app directly from the Play Store, if desired.

And those without a new Android (9 or 10) handset can continue to seek out YouTube Music from the Play Store, if they choose.

YouTube’s streaming music service is fairly competitive in terms of feature set with its larger rivals, like Apple Music and Spotify. Like most in the space, it also offers the ability to discover and stream music, but in its case, this includes albums, live performances, and remixes. With a paid subscription, YouTube Music users can listen ad-free and offline. It also just introduced its own version of Spotify’s Discover Weekly, with the launch of its own Discover Mix.

But because YouTube Music has had to compete with Android’s built-in music app for subscribers, it’s been lagging in subscribers, compared with Spotify and Apple. This is made worse by the fact that there’s not been a way to import a Google Play Music user’s playlists and liked songs, curated over years, to YouTube Music.

YouTube Music, in May, had some 15 million subscribers. For comparison’s sake, Spotify said it had 232 million monthly active users and 108 million paying subscribers at the end of June and Apple Music in June surpassed 60 million subscribers.

 

 

 

This is, surely, the moment some loyal fans have waited for. And understandably so. The Galaxy Fold is, by all measures, an exciting phone. It’s the sort of bold brashness that has helped Samsung set itself apart from the competition. Many of us laughed at the Galaxy Note, too, and yet here we are, with larger phones across the board.

Five months after originally planned, the Galaxy Fold goes on sale today in the U.S. The handset has had its share of set backs, of course. The first round ran into problems from several reviewers for a variety of reasons. And as I outlined yesterday, I ran into my own issues with the reinforced version of the handset.

Even in its current version, the Galaxy Fold is a fragile thing. That’s something Samsung has been abundantly cautious about disclosing, through a video pleading to “just use a light touch” and a lot of paper work that ships with the device. I’ll be giving more thoughts on my time with the product in an upcoming writeup. In the meantime, however, anyone thinking of plunking down the $2,000 and up needs to factor that into the equation.

But this is a phone, not a faberge egg. It will be interesting to see how wider availability plays out. There is still a sense around the launch that we’re dealing with a sort of wider scale beta phase here. It would be silly to suggest that the foldable category will live or die by this launch, but it will surely be the most closely watched device release in recent memory.

Also out today is the Galaxy Watch Active 2. If been wearing that device around as well. More on that soon, but so far, so good.

In a move to correct the imbalance of power between technologically sophisticated corporations and the lawmakers who regulate them, presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren is proposing that Congress reinstate the Office of Technology Assessment.

It’s a move that gets deep into the weeds of how policy making in Washington works, but it’s something that Warren sees as essential to leveling the playing field between well-paid corporate lobbyists who are experts in their fields and over-worked under-staffed congressional members who lack independent analysts to explain highly technical issues.

“Lobbyists are filling in the gaps in congressional resources and expertise by providing Congress information from the perspective of their paying corporate clients. So let’s fix it,” writes Warren.

It’s one of the key planks in Warren’s latest policy proposal and an attempt to tip the scales against corporations and their lobbyists. With the move Warren clearly has her eye on technology companies and their representatives, who often are the very people Congressional lawmakers rely on to explain how rule-making would impact their industries.

“[Members] of Congress aren’t just dependent on corporate lobbyist propaganda because they’re bought and paid for. It’s also because of a successful, decades-long campaign to starve Congress of the resources and expertise needed to independently evaluate complex public policy questions,” Warren writes.

“For every bad faith actor in Congress bought off by the big banks, there are others who are genuinely trying to grapple with the technical aspects of financial reform. But as the issues facing Congress have grown more complex, resources to objectively and independently analyze them have been slashed. Republicans eliminated an independent office of experts dedicated to advising Congress on technical and scientific information,” the Senator says.

The lack of independent analysis stymies Congressional oversight in areas from banking and finance reform, to the oversight of technology companies, to the potential to effectively pass laws that will respond to the threat of climate change. Committees that oversee science and technology have seen their staff levels fall by over 40 percent in the past decade, according to Warren and staff salaries have failed to keep up with inflation, meaning that policymakers in Washington can’t compete for the same level of talent that private companies and lobbyists can afford several times over.

Sen. Warren saw this firsthand when she worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau .

“Financial reform was complicated, and the bank lobbyists used a clever technique: They bombarded the members of Congress with complex arguments filled with obscure terms. Whenever a congressman pushed back on an idea, the lobbyists would explain that although the congressman seemed to be making a good point, he didn’t really understand the complex financial system,” she writes. “And keep in mind, the lobbyists would tell the congressman, that if you get this wrong, you will bring down the global economy.”

The inability of lawmakers to understand basic facts about the technologies they’re tasked with regulating was on full display during the Senate hearings into the role technology companies played in the Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Issues from net neutrality to end-to-end encryption, or online advertising to the reduction of carbon emissions all rely on Congress having a sound understanding of those issues and how regulation may change an industry.

Right now, it’s case of which multi-billion dollar company can buy the best lobbyists — as is the case with Alphabet and Yelp or Facebook and Snap.

Under the auspices of Warren’s anti-corruption plan, the Senator is calling for the reinstatement and modernization of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, a significant increase to salaries for congressional staffers and stronger funding for agencies that support congressional lawmaking.

The OTA was created in the seventies to help members of Congress understand science and technology issues that they’d be regulating. Over the tenure of the agency, it created over 750 reports — including two landmark studies on the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming in the 90s, which brought it to the attention of conservative lawmakers that defunded it in 1995.

At the time, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said the agency was “used by liberals to cover up political ideology.”

Under Warren’s plan the OTA would be lead by an independent director to avoid partisan manipulation. The newly re-formed agency would have the power to commission its own reports and respond to requests from lawmakers to weigh in on rule-making, help congressional legislators prepare for hearings, and write regulatory letters.

Warren also calls for funding to be increased for the other congressional support agencies — the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Government Accountability Office. Combined these agencies have lost half of their staff.

Money for the increased activities of the agencies would come from a tax on “excessive lobbying”. The . goal would be “to reverse these cuts and further strengthen support agencies that members of Congress rely on for independent information,” according to the Warren plan.

“These reforms are vital parts of my plan to free our government from the grip of lobbyists – and restore the public’s trust in its government in the process,” Warren writes.

Before showing “Gemini Man” to a group of reporters last week, director Ang Lee described the movie as a “leap of faith.” Then, to illustrate how nervous he was, he pretended to bite his nails.

Was Lee just being self-effacing? Maybe. But afterwards, when we got a chance to grill him about the production, he had a single question in return: “Did you believe in Junior?” When we answered yes, his relief was palpable.

That’s because Lee is doing something — several things — genuinely new here.

Will Smith plays two characters in “Gemini Man”: a middle-aged government assassin named Henry Brogan, and his younger clone, Junior, who’s sent to kill his older self. Stuntmen stood in for Junior during many of the action sequences, and Smith contributed to the character through performance capture, but ultimately, Junior is a computer-generated creation from the team at effects house Weta Digital.

Lee contrasted Weta’s approach to the way other movies have experimented with using visual effects to de-age stars — he described them as just brushing away actors’ wrinkles: “When you do that, you take away all the details … Aging is much [more] complicated, it’s life.”

Where other movies have limited this process to a handful of scenes (think Robert Downey, Jr. briefly playing a younger version of himself in “Captain America: Civil War”), Lee noted that in “Gemini Man,” Junior is one of two lead characters. That meant he needed to be more than a “gimmick” — and it would have been prohibitively expensive to apply that “handcrafted brushing” to so many shots.

Lee made things even harder for himself by shooting the movie in 3D, at 120 frames per second. In that format, everything looks more clear and detailed than in traditional film, so an unconvincing effect would be even more obvious.

“You see through people like light,” Lee said. “With that requirement, I just don’t think something that erases age will do. You have to create it from zero.”

Apparently, that creation process took two years. And while I wouldn’t describe the results on-screen as completely photo-real, I thought they worked: I never forgot that Junior was an effect, but I also believed in him as a living, breathing character.

Lee added, “One of the hardest things, if not the hardest thing, in animation is: How do you get the secret of him getting paid the big bucks?” In other words, how do you capture Will Smith’s charm?

In his younger days as a director, Lee said he would have only been concerned with making Junior a convincing character, but now, “I’ve made movies long enough to learn to respect that a movie star is not just an actor, it’s something else. He has a contract with people.”

Lee recalled that during rehearsal, Smith was “very generous about sharing what makes Will Smith Will Smith.” Still, he argued, “You cannot retrieve [that charm] from his old movies. You can use that as reference, but what drives it, what final touches [make it work]?”

The challenge of capturing that, he said, is one of the main reasons he wanted to make the film: “When you do the digital face and the body, it’s like a microscopic study of what drama is, what moving is, how does it connect with emotion … and what age does to you, cell-by-cell.”

Lee said there were two other big things that “absorbed” him in making “Gemini Man.” First, there was his aim of creating a more real, more “messy” style of shooting and staging action; he argued that in other films, the action is so heavily choreographed that it’s basically “dancing.” (And this is coming from the director of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”)

Secondly, he wanted to explore “the beauty of this kind of media, digital cinema.” That’s why he shot “Gemini Man” at the aforementioned 120 frames per second. He’s clearly enamored with the format, having shot his last movie “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” at a high frame rate as well, but he acknowledged that it’s something audiences still have to get used to. (When it doesn’t work, it can be hard to distinguish from bad TV.)

Lee’s “dream” is that one day, this approach will no longer be called “high frame rate” — instead, it’s the standard 24 frames per second that should be called “low frame rate,” because the default will have changed.

“You don’t call it color film, right?” he said. “You say silent film, you say black-and-white.”

And if “Gemini Man” is commercially successful, Lee is hoping other filmmakers will join him to “explore this new world” and further develop the technology. In the process, they might give audiences a reason to come back to theaters.

“People think 3D … or anything high-tech is the opposite of art and soul, and I don’t buy that,” Lee said. “I have to deliver action and spectacle — I’m delighted to do it — but I think the biggest gain [is] studying the human face close up.”

That, in turn, could lead to a different style of acting: “[In] this media, you read through people. They cannot fake it; they have to fake it differently, rather. They have to upgrade their skills.”

“Gemini Man” opens in theaters in October 11. Before then, you can watch Lee and Smith discuss the movie next week at Disrupt SF.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

As with yesterday, Kate and Alex were both on-site at TechCrunch’s San Francisco headquarters to chat over the latest. Unlike yesterday, however, Equity brought along a guest: Sean Dempsey from Merus Capital. (Merus writes Seed and Series A checks, with a focus on enterprise companies.)

And thus the three dove into the news. Early-stage first, to shake things up.

Early-Stage

Kate wrote a story this week about a startup you might have forgotten about but who’s name probably rings a bell. Bodega! The company now goes by Stockwell, actually, and they’ve raised a whopping total of $45 million in VC funding. But what’s in a name after all? We debate.

Next we turned to an interesting company called Kapwing. What’s that you ask? “It’s a laymen’s Adobe Creative Suite built for what people actually do on the internet: make memes and remix media,” says TechCrunch’s Josh Constine. We’re intrigued.

Late-Stage And Beyond

This week Peloton priced and went public. The firm’s $29 per-share IPO price was top of its proposed range ($26 to $29). The public markets, however, decided that the unicorn had reached too high.

So, shares of the high-end exercise company dropped, wrapping the day down about 11 percent. A good IPO first day this was not, though the company did manage to raise more capital than it might have with more conservative pricing. (Peloton has a yucky multi-class share structure that we touched on as well; it seems that all the big companies these days are opposed to regular governance.)

Next we turned to the Vox-NYMag merger. It’s a bit out of our territory but its a digital media deal, so we were interested. After all, the two of us have spent our entire careers in digital media and we have a vested interested in these companies surviving.

WeWork (Redux)

We honestly tried to get all the WeWork out of our system yesterday. We wanted to include zero WeWork content on this episode. But WeWork keeps doing things, so here we are.

Keeping things as brief as we can, WeWork is going to divest some companies that it bought (more on what we thought it was up to, here) including its jet, and the firm is looking to take on more capital. Unsurprisingly.

All that and we’re done for this week. Chat you all at Disrupt!

A major drone incident at the UK’s second business airport last year continues to baffle police.

Last December a series of drone sightings near Gatwick Airport caused chaos as scores of flights were grounded and thousands of travellers had their holiday plans disrupted.

The incident, which took place during a peak travel period ahead of Christmas, led to the airport being closed for 30 hours, disrupting 1,000 flights and more than 140,000 passengers.

Today Sussex Police have released an update on their multi-month investigation into who was operating the drones — with thin findings, saying they have “identified, researched and ruled out 96 people ‘of interest’”.

Although they are now sure that drones played a part in the disruption. The report confirms that at least two drones were involved. The police are also convinced the perpetrator or perpetrators had detailed knowledge of the airport.

“The police investigation has centred on 129 separate sightings of drone activity, 109 of these from credible witnesses used to working in a complex airport environment including a pilot, airport workers and airport police,” the force writes.

“Witness statements show activity happened in ‘groupings’ across the three days on 12 separate occasions, varying in length from between seven and 45 minutes. On six of these occasions, witnesses clearly saw two drones operating simultaneously.”

“The incident was not deemed terror-related and there is no evidence to suggest it was either state-sponsored, campaign or interest-group led. No further arrests have been made,” it adds.

The policing operation during the disruption and subsequent investigation has cost £790,000 so far.

Sussex Police is drawing a line under its investigation at this point, saying without new information coming to light “there are no further realistic lines of enquiry at this time”. 

The chaos caused by drones shutting Gatwick led to sharp criticism of the government which rushed through tighter restrictions on drone flights near airports.

Shortly after the Gatwick debacle drone maker DJI also updated its geofencing system across Europe.

A comprehensive UK drone bill — intended to beef up police powers to curb drone misuse, and which could contain policy on flight information notification systems — has remained stalled.

In a ‘future of drones’ report published at the start of this year ministers said they intended to bring the bill forward this year. But the government is fast running out of parliamentary time to do so.

It had already made provision to introduce mandatory drone registration.

From November 30 it will be a legal requirement for all UK drone operators to register, as well as for drone pilots to complete an online pilot competency test.

While Sussex Police have ruled out the Gatwick drone incident being related to a campaign or interest-group, earlier this month an environmental group attempted to shut down Heathrow using toy drones flown at head height in the legal restriction zone.

The Heathrow Pause protest action did not result in any disruption to flights. Police arrested a number of activists before and after they flew drones.

A major drone incident at the UK’s second business airport last year continues to baffle police.

Last December a series of drone sightings near Gatwick Airport caused chaos as scores of flights were grounded and thousands of travellers had their holiday plans disrupted.

The incident, which took place during a peak travel period ahead of Christmas, led to the airport being closed for 30 hours, disrupting 1,000 flights and more than 140,000 passengers.

Today Sussex Police have released an update on their multi-month investigation into who was operating the drones — with thin findings, saying they have “identified, researched and ruled out 96 people ‘of interest’”.

Although they are now sure that drones played a part in the disruption. The report confirms that at least two drones were involved. The police are also convinced the perpetrator or perpetrators had detailed knowledge of the airport.

“The police investigation has centred on 129 separate sightings of drone activity, 109 of these from credible witnesses used to working in a complex airport environment including a pilot, airport workers and airport police,” the force writes.

“Witness statements show activity happened in ‘groupings’ across the three days on 12 separate occasions, varying in length from between seven and 45 minutes. On six of these occasions, witnesses clearly saw two drones operating simultaneously.”

“The incident was not deemed terror-related and there is no evidence to suggest it was either state-sponsored, campaign or interest-group led. No further arrests have been made,” it adds.

The policing operation during the disruption and subsequent investigation has cost £790,000 so far.

Sussex Police is drawing a line under its investigation at this point, saying without new information coming to light “there are no further realistic lines of enquiry at this time”. 

The chaos caused by drones shutting Gatwick led to sharp criticism of the government which rushed through tighter restrictions on drone flights near airports.

Shortly after the Gatwick debacle drone maker DJI also updated its geofencing system across Europe.

A comprehensive UK drone bill — intended to beef up police powers to curb drone misuse, and which could contain policy on flight information notification systems — has remained stalled.

In a ‘future of drones’ report published at the start of this year ministers said they intended to bring the bill forward this year. But the government is fast running out of parliamentary time to do so.

It had already made provision to introduce mandatory drone registration.

From November 30 it will be a legal requirement for all UK drone operators to register, as well as for drone pilots to complete an online pilot competency test.

While Sussex Police have ruled out the Gatwick drone incident being related to a campaign or interest-group, earlier this month an environmental group attempted to shut down Heathrow using toy drones flown at head height in the legal restriction zone.

The Heathrow Pause protest action did not result in any disruption to flights. Police arrested a number of activists before and after they flew drones.

DeadHappy, a U.K.-based insurtech startup that wants to offer more flexible life insurance and remove the taboo surrounding death, has raised £4 million in Series A funding. Backing comes from e.ventures, alongside the company’s seed investor Octopus Ventures.

Founded in 2017, DeadHappy claims to be the UK’s “first fully digital pay-as-you-go life insurance provider”. It offers flexible life insurance policies that are designed to be “cheaper, easier and better” than existing traditional providers. This including pricing insurance based on your current circumstances and the option to add (or remove) further coverage on a rolling basis.

More broadly, the startup is developing what it calls its “Deathwish” platform, which is something akin to a will. The idea is that you can specify how you wish any future insurance payout to be used, such as paying off your mortgage. And there are also plans to incorporate other wishes not related to finances.

“Our vision is to change attitudes to death and we are tackling that in a number of ways,” DeadHappy co-founder Phil Zeidler tells me. “Despite death being the one certainty humans face, it remains for many a taboo subject, and the failure to talk about it and plan for it is both counterintuitive and leads to significant further trauma at the most difficult of times for family and loved ones”.

Currently the Deathwish platform offers financially motivated Deathwishes, but the longer term plan is to enable practical Deathwishes, such as making sure your funeral is the way you want it, and what Zeidler calls emotionally motivated Deathwishes.

The idea is to help offer a way to help loved ones “achieve something meaningful in their lives, whether that’s learning how to play the drums or funding an expedition to the Amazon,” he explains.

“Crucially, customers can share these Deathwishes as they choose, which is a practical tool to ensure their wishes are clear and understood. Our platform acts as a catalyst for opening a conversation with loved ones and a place to share recorded video messages and stories”.

Meanwhile, DeadHappy says it will use the new for future growth by further building the technology and capabilities of its Deathwish platform. It also plans to expand its product and partnership offerings to major financial service distributors.

DeadHappy, a U.K.-based insurtech startup that wants to offer more flexible life insurance and remove the taboo surrounding death, has raised £4 million in Series A funding. Backing comes from e.ventures, alongside the company’s seed investor Octopus Ventures.

Founded in 2017, DeadHappy claims to be the UK’s “first fully digital pay-as-you-go life insurance provider”. It offers flexible life insurance policies that are designed to be “cheaper, easier and better” than existing traditional providers. This including pricing insurance based on your current circumstances and the option to add (or remove) further coverage on a rolling basis.

More broadly, the startup is developing what it calls its “Deathwish” platform, which is something akin to a will. The idea is that you can specify how you wish any future insurance payout to be used, such as paying off your mortgage. And there are also plans to incorporate other wishes not related to finances.

“Our vision is to change attitudes to death and we are tackling that in a number of ways,” DeadHappy co-founder Phil Zeidler tells me. “Despite death being the one certainty humans face, it remains for many a taboo subject, and the failure to talk about it and plan for it is both counterintuitive and leads to significant further trauma at the most difficult of times for family and loved ones”.

Currently the Deathwish platform offers financially motivated Deathwishes, but the longer term plan is to enable practical Deathwishes, such as making sure your funeral is the way you want it, and what Zeidler calls emotionally motivated Deathwishes.

The idea is to help offer a way to help loved ones “achieve something meaningful in their lives, whether that’s learning how to play the drums or funding an expedition to the Amazon,” he explains.

“Crucially, customers can share these Deathwishes as they choose, which is a practical tool to ensure their wishes are clear and understood. Our platform acts as a catalyst for opening a conversation with loved ones and a place to share recorded video messages and stories”.

Meanwhile, DeadHappy says it will use the new for future growth by further building the technology and capabilities of its Deathwish platform. It also plans to expand its product and partnership offerings to major financial service distributors.

UK startups concerned the country is about to leave the European Union in just a little over a month’s time with nothing agreed to ensure a smooth transition should point their eyes at this guide — put together by startup policy advocacy group, Coadec.

While a ‘no deal’ brexit is still not inevitable the chances of it happening have stepped up sharply in recent months as the clock winds down towards exit day with no withdrawal agreement in place. Such an outcome has major implications for technology businesses, given the cross-border nature of services startups tend to provide.

“With the UK potentially just over a month away from exiting the EU, no deal remains the default option,” warns Coadec. “We are clear that no deal would be disastrous for the startup community…but that doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. That’s why we have teamed up with the UK Tech Cluster Group & Tech Nation to put together this guidance for the startup community.”

Under current prime minister, Boris Johnson, the UK government has sharply dialled up the brexit rhetoric. Johnson has said — in typical flashy fashion — that he’d rather be “dead in a ditch” than ask for an extension to the October 31st deadline for agreeing a deal with the European Union.

He has also prorogued parliament — illegally — in an attempt to bypass parliamentary scrutiny, which he described in an internal memo as “a rigmarole“.

The prorogation was quashed by the Supreme Court. But since parliament resumed this week ministers have been refusing to clearly state whether the government will abide by a law it passed just before it got closed down — which requires the PM to ask the EU for an extension if he fails to secure a withdrawal deal before October 19.

Speculation is therefore rife over what political chicanery the government might seek to pull to wiggle out of complying with the law and crash the UK out regardless.

Former UK prime minister, John Major, gave a speech this week warning that such a move would be unforgivable. But there are no signs the government is rethinking its approach.

Johnson has been splashing public money on an advertising campaign that instructs the country to “Get ready for brexit” (such as the billboard pictured above). The government also claims to have substantially ramped up domestic preparations for a no deal exit.

While it’s possible this loud show of bullying bravado is a theatrical tactic to try to pressure the EU into shifting position on contested brexit issues (primarily the Irish back-stop) — so Johnson can grab a deal which could pass a vote in parliament — it’s also possible the government isn’t that interested in a deal, and just wants to deliver brexit “do or die”, as the PM has also put it.

Even if it’s theatrics it doesn’t mean the whole high stakes game of chicken might not backfire — resulting in the UK actually crashing out with nothing on Halloween. The only robust legal certainty is that without an extension to Article 50 the UK will indeed leave the EU on October 31, deal or no deal.

Given rising political turmoil in the UK combined with a hard and fast-approaching brexit deadline, startups are well advised to prepare for the worst — which means leaving the EU with no contingencies in place beyond those you’ve put in place yourself.

Coadec’s guide presents a concise overview of ten issues the policy advocacy group believes should be front of mind for startups and scaleups thinking about how to manage no deal risk.

The guide does not (and is not intended) to replace professional legal advice but it does cuts through a lot of the noise and fuzz around brexit — so it’s well worth a read, especially if you’re trying to get up to speed fast.

Top of their list is data flows — a major consideration for tech businesses that receive personal data from the EU or EEA.

“Startups will need to create contract-based legal structures to replace the free flows of data we took for granted under the European system,” Coadec writes, noting that the UK’s data protection agency is advising startups to look at model clauses, binding corporate rules, codes of conduct or certification mechanisms as alternatives for their data flows.

“These complicated legal structures have typically been the preserve of larger businesses and corporations, not startups and scaleups — so will take time to put in place,” it warns. “If you haven’t started preparations for your post-brexit data flows, they should be a priority now.”

Other issues the guide deals with include immigration & visas; taxation & VAT; and the impact of a no deal on specific pieces of EU legislation and strategy that are relevant to startups — such as the e-Commerce Directive and Digital Single Market — as well as related pieces of legislation (such as ePrivacy) that risk being caught in limbo by brexit as they’ve not yet been passed.

There’s also advice for startups that have .eu domain names, and for those who’ve received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 R&D fund, as well as links to relevant government resources.

The guide can be downloaded as a PDF here.

How is your startup preparing for brexit? What’s your biggest ‘no deal’ concern? How much is it costing you to manage brexit risk? Let us know by emailing tips@techcrunch.com