South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 77

Weekly Business; Monday. 3, 1987 PERSONALITY PROFILE CLOSE PR OXMITY Peter N. Yianilos' software company offers electronic dictionaries for word processors, typewriters and computers. By JIM McNAIR Business Writer hile many sixth-grade students in Fort Lauderdale were just getting into abstract forms of mathematics, Peter N. Peter Yianilos "doesn't strike you as being a brain, but the more you get to know him, the more you realize he has a great deal of talent.

He has a tremendous breadth of knowledge in a vast number of areas." Colin Jones, Proximity Technology chairman Yianilos at Bennett Elementary School was already building his first computer, a test grader made from aluminum foil and electrical parts. Straying from fellow students, though, would characterize the rest of Yianilos' years in school In 1979, as a 22-year-old doctoral candidate at the University of California-Berkeley, he left his classmates behind altogether so he could start his own software company. Launching that company, Proximity Technology brought Yianilos back to his hometown, where his parents still live. His father, Nick Yianilos, already was well known as the former owner of the old Ranch House restaurant chain, but son Peter had no inclination to enter the food business. "In fact, I didn't think I'd end up in business at all," said Yianilos, who at 30 still resembles the pudgy-faced college student he once was.

"I've always been inclined toward mathematics. Ever since elementary school, I knew I was going to do mathematics, except that I thought I was going to be a mathematics professor grading papers." Today, Proximity Technology employs 37 people in Fort Lauderdale and Sunnwale. 1 jl 'XtsX l5XXLy xC' 'x v. "I knew nothing," Yianilos said and laughed. "The day I started the company, I flew to New York and went to the local paperback bookstore and bought a book on accounting.

Since then I've picked up a reasonable image of the way things work." Yianilos has dabbled full time in management, sales and product development as well as finance. He now regards himself as the company's chief scientist and is involved in all projects, including the development of a $1.5 million supercomputer. When he tries to maximize his position as chief executive officer, Yianilos realizes he doesn't have enough time to tackle every task, so has asked his three sectional managers to consult with him only when absolutely necessary. "I've got very very strong pigheaded even people in each of these three groups, which is good because I don't want any pushovers. I want people who'll stand up for what they believe," Yianilos said fervently.

"Without strong people in each section, I was involved in everything. So what I tell my people is that I'm not to be depended on. I'm not to be put in any paths or any loops." Because Yianilos' family had made money from the sale of the Ranch House restaurants, he was able to secure a 20 percent share of the company's stock, compared with Simon's approximately 25 percent. With a strong handle on the company, Yianilos made it a family affair, younger brothers Tom and William work for the company as vice president of national accounts and as an accountant, respectively. Company Chairman Colin Jones, a 20-year IBM veteran and former chairman of Sensormatic Electronics Corp.

in Deerfield Beach, expresses confidence in Yianilos' abilities. Jones used to play golf with Nick Yianilos and had heard about the young man's projects in college, but when he tried to help promote the algorithm, he failed to arouse interest because it was "so ahead of itself." "He doesn't strike you as being a brain, but the more you get to know him, the more you realize he has a great deal of talent," Jones said. "He has a tremendous breadth of knowledge in a vast number of "There's a lot of guys who are geniuses who are out in left field. He's not in left field," Jones said. Calif.

By the end of the year, Yianilos estimates that the privately held company will have earned a profit approaching $750,000 on $5 million in sales its third straight year of profitability. Typical for a software firm, Proximity has no name recognition to the average person. But within the industry itself, the company's reputation has been snowballing because of a patented linguistics technology developed by Yianilos before he left college. Proximity creates and sells electronic dictionaries, thesauruses and hyphenators for word processors, electronic typewriters and mainframe and personal computers of many different makes. Wang, Unisys, Data General, Sharp, Casio, Olivetti are among the manufacturers that incorporate Proximity technology in their chips.

Ashton-Tate and Lotus are among the software publishers that incorporate Proximity's technolocrv for PC urograms Staff photoJOANN VITELLI Peter N. Yianilos estimates his firm will have earned $750,000 by year-end. directors. He still is convinced that the PF474 technology is ahead of its time. 'To my knowledge, there isn't another algorithm with the elegance and speed of this one which measures the sorts of judgments a human would make.

There really isn't anything like it," he said. Simons described the algorithm's ability to find approximate correct answers to the human quest for beauty. If you go out to iind a good-looking woman or a handsome man, you know how to do that, he said. "You make approximate judgments. You don't go to a down-to-the-last-micron description of what you're looking for." Finance and accounting hadn't been among Yianilos' college math courses by the time he founded Proximity.

To help himself in those areas, he elected to go with on-the-job training. diagnose certain diseases by examining heartbeats. One PF474-based product sold by Proximity, called Cleanmail, eliminates duplication on mailing lists, while another, called Friendly Finder, lists the most likely correct spellings of misspelled names and words. The heaviest users, however, are in the Defense Department, which doesn't divulge its applications. "One of the biggest users of our chips will never tell us how they use our chips because it's too classified," Yianilos said.

Yianilos might have proceeded into a teaching career had it not been for a college professor who recognized the commercial value of the algorithm and the venture capitalist who financed Yianilos' way into business. Jim Simons, chairman of Renaissance Technologies Inc. in New York City, invested about $350,000 in Proximity in 1979,, taking a seat on its board of Although there is no contractual i relationship with International Business Machines Proximity's programs are 1 available for IBM PCs. Soon they will be sold in software stores. Those products are easy enough to relate to.

But then there is the company's biggest contribution to the gee-whiz computer movement: the PF474 chip. Based on a I patented algorithm developed by Yianilos at Berkeley an algorithm is the series of I steps that a computer follows to perform a task the PF474 performs search functions nearly as accurately as a person does. It works like this: By comparing "strings" of characters or signals, the PF474 can correct most misspelled words and.