Playford Capital CEO Amanda Heyworth

Playford Capital CEO Amanda Heyworth is one of a handful of women working as a venture capital investor in Australia. In a specialised area dominated by men, Amanda brings a fresh perspective and a wealth of experience to the leadership role at Playford Capital, an early stage technology fund that backs the creation of new businesses, ranging from start-ups to sales of around $5 million.

A central motivator for Amanda is working alongside entrepreneurs to help them achieve their goals – a passion that calls on her diverse skills in building, managing and overseeing businesses as well as strategic policy development at the highest levels of government and industry.

Playford Capital www.playford.com.au specialises in high growth, technology-based companies targeting industry sectors including defence, health, food, beverage, mining, waste processing and water logistics. In June 2006, Playford announced it had attracted more than $50 million in funding for young SA technology innovators during the previous five years.

Playford has announced two major investments in the first eight months of 2007:

• Cavitus, an Australian company with world-leading High Power Ultrasonics (HPU) technology that delivers a breakthrough wine barrel-cleaning and disinfection system and offers innovative applications in the wider food and beverage industry
• e-channel online, a company with software that enables large, database-rich websites to automatically create keywords and optimise management of online advertising campaigns. 

An “evergreen” fund, Playford recently sold its investment in DSpace, a satellite technology company with defence applications, which freed up cash for more investments.

Amanda came to technology investment in a roundabout way. In previous “lives”, she was an accountant, investment banker, economic adviser and ran her own software business. “Although there was no planned pattern to my career, I gained a strong grounding in finance and marketing,” she says. “It turns out these are two of the most important success factors in creating new technology-based businesses.”

After graduating from university with an accounting degree, Amanda won a traineeship at the world headquarters of Burroughs Computers in downtown Detroit.  At the time, Detroit was famous for its murder rate and its baseball team. “The poverty in Detroit was a real eye opener and reinforced for me how great it is to live in Adelaide,” she recalls.

Amanda returned to Australia to work in investment banking on corporate lending and property deals. Early in her career, she worked on some large deals like SA Brewing’s acquisition of Rheem and the initial public offer of the Commonwealth Bank. 

As a newlywed, she accompanied husband James to Canberra for her next change of career.  “With no investment banks in Canberra, I become an economist overnight,” she explains. That led to strategy roles at the Wallis Inquiry into the Financial System and the Australian Stock Exchange in Sydney.

In 1996, Amanda co-founded a company that sold software on the Internet.  “We had technology and finance covered, but learned sales and marketing the hard way,” she says. “Fortunately, we got more right than wrong and ended up running a profitable business with customers in more than 60 countries.”

That entrepreneurial experiment sparked an interest in business and an MBA at the Australian Graduate School of Management in Sydney, where she went on to teach marketing. Amanda and James returned to Adelaide with a newborn baby in 1999.  They now have two sons, Tom and Sam.

Amanda was appointed as CEO of Playford Capital in 2004 after several years working as an investment manager. In the same year, she was elected to the board of the Savings and Loans Credit Union, one of the top 500 unlisted companies in Australia.

"I get a real kick out of my current roles which make a contribution to South Australia,” says Amanda. “At Playford Capital, I enjoy investing in start-ups, which can make a big difference for small companies.  I think this is incredibly important given the challenges faced by South Australia’s traditional manufacturing base.  It’s vital to see new companies grow and thrive.  Not all new ventures will succeed, but those that do generate export income for the State and high quality jobs for our kids.”

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To request an interview with Amanda Heyworth, please call John Harris on 08 8431 4000 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .