When Jen Clark launched Heartful, the web lodging market for sustainable and inclusive journey, simply over 12 months in the past, the very last thing she predicted as a founder was that AI bot assaults might result in its potential demise.
It wasn’t even an assault on Heartful, which has greater than 550 high-quality property listings nationally. They got here after 47-year-old LGBTIQ+ founder’s funding supply, her design enterprise.
The Ai bot assault, spanning October and November 2025, originating from China and Singapore, overwhelmed the Jen Clark Design web site, regardless of having sturdy safety measures in place. She’d usually obtain round 20-25 consumer enquiries a month, which persistently generated revenue to fund Heartful’s early operations. They vanished.
“Within days, our primary revenue stream was gone,” Clark stated.
The Heartful app
“By the time we restored functionality, our runway had evaporated. Despite my best efforts in recent days to secure bridge funding or find an acquisition partner, we ran out of time.”
Clark is now searching for an acquisition companion or purchaser to proceed or evolve Heartful or she faces the heartbreaking determination of closing it subsequent week, simply earlier than Christmas.
“Heartful had the team, technology, market validation, and clarity of vision to succeed,” she stated.
“What we didn’t have was access to the capital that would have allowed us to weather an unexpected crisis. This business could have been – and still could be – an enormous success with the right backing.”
Clark launched her startup in October 2024. She additionally hosts the Internet hosting with Coronary heart podcast about short-term lodging internet hosting, and lives in Woodend in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, about an hour north-west of Melbourne.
She was a finalist within the 2025 Australian Girls in Journey Awards ‘Rising Star’ class and jokes that she represents a number of underrepresented cohorts within the startup sector, having been recognized as autistic with ADHD a couple of years in the past. Her household are additionally neurodivergent.
So she’s conscious of how powerful it’s for ladies founders.
“Projected figures for 2025 suggest funding for female-founded startups in Australia could fall below 0.5%, the lowest level on record,” Clark stated.
“Solo female founders building purpose driven companies are even less likely to receive investment.”
A booming market
Heartful raised some capital by way of fairness crowdfunding and has greater than 130 shareholders, and she or he hopes that somebody can see the chance they’ve invested in.
“We’ve solved the toughest issues: constructing enterprise-grade know-how, attaining product-market match on one aspect of {the marketplace}, validating the enterprise mannequin, and creating real neighborhood engagement,” stated Clark.
“For the right acquirer, this represents an exceptional opportunity to enter the ethical travel market with a ready-made, validated platform and passionate community already in place.”
Heartful caters to Australia’s two fastest-growing tourism sectors: accessible tourism (value $29.2 billion in 2024) and sustainable tourism, with a selected deal with regional communities and Indigenous heritage.
“Accessible and sustainable tourism aren’t niche segments – they’re the future of travel,” stated Clark.
“Astute, intelligent consumers deserve platforms built with genuine understanding and commitment. That’s what Heartful offers.”
The platform has aggressive fee construction whereas committing 1% of reserving proceeds to Properties for Properties Australia for inexpensive and social housing initiatives.
Jen Clark hopes she doesn’t must make the painful determination to close down Heartful as she rebuilds her 15-year-old design follow.
“This closure doesn’t in any way diminish what we’ve built together. I truly hope the right partner will carry this torch forward,” she stated.
If you wish to get in contact, e-mail her at jen[at]heartful.journey, or go to Heartful.com.au.
The Heartful website
