Lycos,Ins.,was a poster child for dot-com start-ups. The company’s core search engine technology was spawned in the labs of Carnegie Mellon University by Michael Mauldin in 1994. CMGI, the Internet investment conglomerate, nurtured the upstart financially with funding through CMGI@Ventures in 1995. The company then settled in the tech-heavy Route 128 corridor of Massachusetts. A mere 10 months after hiring its first employ, the company went public in April 1996. Lycos rode the on-line wave of search engines, portals,and Netscape.