Startups

Investors say that they love Duolingo because of its business model, but the dependency upon crowdsourcing atop an otherwise innovative system still puts a large chunk of the product in the hands of a participating audience.

There’s nothing quite like plastering pink mustaches on cars to get a startup noticed, but Lyft tries to go one step deeper with its efforts to foster relationships during rides. Will users going from point A to B really care?

Lots of new players moving into this upscale private rentals market, including NextGreatPlace, Portico Club and Inspirato. Luxury Retreat probably saw the opportunity as everyone else is bulking up with large fundings as well.

The startup is starting in New York City and San Francisco two cities which, despite all their similarities, are vastly different when it comes to two wheels. Luckily, it has a head start in New York before the city-wide share program kicks in this coming spring.

The Ramallah-based hotel booker focuses both on Arabic content and regional bookings that are attractive to travelers still trying to make sense of the post-Arab Spring travel map.

SendmyBag scored a small victory after its reality-show smackdown, but it will need to figure out how to do something special if it's to beat existing services -- like UPS or FedEx in the U.S. -- at the still nacent luggage-shipping game.

Indiewalls’ greatest feature for hotels is the ability to constantly offer guests something new and distinctive with minimal outlay and very little work.

Many similar apps have come and gone, but if Mixer gains enough users, it'd be a more local, personal way to quickly learn about a new area without having to reveal much personal information.

RouteHappy is bringing a level of data about flight amenties to masses of passengers that until now only the most avid aviation geeks would have been aware of. RouteHappy's challenge is to see how much consumers really care about flight amenities as they vary aircraft to aircraft.

HomeAway is making use of resources in its own backyard and furthering the ambitions of student travel-startups that could end up helping HomeAway's vacation rental business.