A WEEK ago, Gulliver took a trip to California. His credit card allowed him to check in a bag free, but southern California doesn’t require much bulky clothing in late August so he made do with a carry-on. Still, in this era of luggage fees, it felt almost wasteful to let a baggage allotment go unfilled. It is probably no surprise to hear that there’s an app for that. And there’s money in it, too.

Grabr, a startup in San Francisco, just raised $3.5m, some of which came from a Russian government fund, and has 50,000 users.