Business Trivia
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98 free Business trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free business trivia questions with answers. This business trivia quiz collects the facts that make company histories fun: the $35 Nike Swoosh, Amazon's first name, the misspelling behind Google, the waffle iron behind running shoes, Nintendo's playing-card origins, IKEA's acronym, Nokia's paper mill and Toyota's lucky brush strokes. It also visits Wall Street: the Buttonwood Agreement, the Dow's 1896 debut, Nasdaq's electronic first, Black Tuesday and the largest bankruptcy in US history. Along the way you get the world's first speculative bubble, the first joint-stock company, Standard Oil's break-up, Blockbuster passing on Netflix, Ponzi and Madoff, and Adam Smith. Easy questions suit office quiz nights and MBA icebreakers; the harder ones on dates and dollar figures will test finance nerds. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
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Q 01How much was graphic design student Carolyn Davidson paid in 1971 for creating the Nike Swoosh?
$35
$35 covered the hours she billed at $2 an hour; Phil Knight said he didn't love the logo but it might grow on him, and in 1983 he thanked her with a diamond Swoosh ring and 500 Nike shares.
Q 02Under what name did Jeff Bezos originally found Amazon in July 1994?
Cadabra
Cadabra, a name with a magical ring, lasted only a few months: Bezos dropped it after his lawyer misheard it as 'cadaver', and chose Amazon instead.
Q 03Google's name is a play on googol, the number 1 followed by how many zeros?
100
100 zeros make a googol, a word said to have been invented by a mathematician's nine-year-old nephew; the search engine itself had first been called BackRub.
Q 04Nike was founded in 1964 by Phil Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman under what name?
Blue Ribbon Sports
Blue Ribbon Sports began by importing Onitsuka Tiger running shoes, which Knight sold at track meets from his car; the Nike name, after the goddess of victory, came in 1971.
Q 05Which kitchen appliance did Bill Bowerman use to mould a new grippy sole for Nike running shoes?
A waffle iron
A waffle iron gave Bowerman the idea over breakfast with his wife; the 1972 'Moon Shoe' that followed was so named because its tread was said to resemble astronauts' footprints on the Moon.
Q 06Which third Apple co-founder sold his stake back for $800 within two weeks of the company's 1976 founding?
Ronald Wayne
Ronald Wayne drew Apple's first logo and drafted the partnership papers, then pulled out in under two weeks: burned by debts from a failed slot-machine business, he feared being liable for the new firm's.
Q 07Who led Apple when it became the first US company valued at over $1 trillion in 2018?
Tim Cook
Tim Cook took over six weeks before Steve Jobs died in 2011; the trillion-dollar mark came 21 years after Apple had needed a $150 million investment from arch-rival Microsoft.
Q 08Which company did Fusajiro Yamauchi found in Kyoto in 1889 to make hanafuda playing cards?
Nintendo
Nintendo stuck to playing cards for some 70 years, then tried a taxi company and instant rice in the 1960s before toys, and later video games, took over.
Q 09IKEA is an acronym of founder Ingvar Kamprad's initials plus what?
His family farm and home village
His family farm and home village, Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, supply the E and the A; Kamprad founded IKEA at 17 to sell things like picture frames and nylon stockings, adding furniture only five years later.
Q 10The name Lego derives from a Danish phrase meaning what?
Play well
Play well is 'leg godt' in Danish, which Ole Kirk Christiansen shortened to Lego in 1934; only later did he learn that lego can also be read in Latin as 'I put together'.
Q 11Which mobile phone maker began in 1865 as a riverside pulp mill and later moved into rubber and cables?
Nokia
Nokia takes its name from the Finnish town where founder Fredrik Idestam built his second mill, drawn by the stronger river there; rubber and cables came long before phones.
Q 12Which South Korean conglomerate began in 1938 as a small firm trading dried fish and noodles?
Samsung
Samsung, 'three stars' in Korean, moved from Lee Byung-chul's grocery trade into sugar refining after the Korean War, and only entered electronics in 1969.
Q 13Which carmaker began as part of a family loom firm and changed one letter of the family name?
Toyota
Toyota was Toyoda until a 1936 logo contest that drew 27,000 entries; the new spelling is said to have appealed partly because it takes eight brush strokes, a lucky number, to write.
Q 21Which US president was under eight months into office when Wall Street crashed in October 1929?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover answered Black Tuesday by urging business leaders not to cut wages, expecting a short recession; instead the Depression deepened, and he lost the 1932 election to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Q 22Which accounting firm was dissolved after the 2001 Enron scandal?
Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen was convicted in 2002 of obstruction for shredding Enron audit papers; the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the verdict three years later, too late to save the firm.
Q 23Which firm made the largest bankruptcy filing in US history on September 15, 2008?
Lehman Brothers
Q 14Which Seattle landmark is home to the store known as the Original Starbucks?
Pike Place Market
Pike Place Market has housed the store since 1976, when Starbucks moved from its first shop on nearby Western Avenue; for its first decade the firm sold coffee beans, not drinks.
Q 15Microsoft was founded in 1975 to sell BASIC interpreters for which early microcomputer?
The Altair 8800
The Altair 8800 was a machine Gates and Allen had never touched when they wrote its BASIC; Allen finished the loader on the flight to Albuquerque, and only at the maker's demo did they learn it worked.
Q 16Before Warren Buffett took control in 1965, Berkshire Hathaway was what kind of business?
A textile manufacturer
A textile manufacturer in decline, it was meant as a quick trade; when its boss shaved an eighth of a dollar off an agreed buyback price, Buffett bought control out of spite, and later called it his dumbest purchase.
Q 17In which city was Warren Buffett born in 1930, giving him his famous nickname?
Omaha
Omaha kept its 'Oracle': the house Buffett bought there in 1958 for $31,500 stayed his home even as he became one of the richest people in the world.
Q 18Which company introduced the first moving assembly line for cars in 1913 at its Highland Park factory?
Ford
Ford's moving line cut the time to build a Model T from more than 12 hours to about 93 minutes, and the savings let the touring car's price fall from $850 in 1908 to under $300 by 1925.
Q 19The 1792 pact among 24 brokers that gave rise to the New York Stock Exchange is named after what?
A buttonwood tree
A buttonwood tree in lower Manhattan is where legend puts the signing; the brokers agreed to deal only with each other and to charge a fixed commission, cutting out the auctioneers.
Q 20Which stock market opened in 1971 as the world's first electronic exchange?
Nasdaq
Nasdaq began as a screen-based quotation system: dealers' prices appeared on terminals, but trades were still agreed by telephone until electronic execution arrived in 1984.
Lehman Brothers failed with more than $600 billion in assets after being told there would be no government bailout; the very next day the Federal Reserve stepped in to support the insurer AIG.
Q 24What is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble in history?
Tulip mania
Tulip mania ended early in 1637, when prices for rare bulbs collapsed almost overnight; historians now think later storytellers exaggerated the ruin it caused.
Q 25Which trading firm, established in 1602, is often called the first multinational?
The Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company could build forts, keep its own armed forces and make treaties with foreign rulers; trading in its shares grew into the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
Q 26Exxon and Chevron descend from which company, broken up in 1911?
Standard Oil
Standard Oil was ruled an illegal monopoly, yet the breakup made John D. Rockefeller richer, because shares in the separate companies soon climbed in value.
Q 27George Eastman chose the name Kodak in 1888 partly because of his fondness for which letter?
K
K was Eastman's favourite, 'a strong, incisive sort of letter'; he said he tried out combinations of letters until he had a short word that both started and ended with it.
Q 28In 2000, Blockbuster turned down the chance to buy Netflix for how much?
$50 million
$50 million was the asking price when Netflix's founders pitched Blockbuster in 2000; the video chain passed, and ten years later it was the one filing for bankruptcy.
Q 29Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph as what kind of service?
DVD rental by mail
DVD rental by mail began with a test: the founders posted a music CD in a greeting-card envelope to see whether a disc would survive the post, and it arrived the next day unharmed.
Q 30Which company topped the very first Fortune 500 list in 1955?
General Motors
General Motors led a list dominated by manufacturers and oil companies; 54 years later the one-time number one filed for bankruptcy and needed a government rescue.