50 Fun Facts About Business

How much was graphic design student Carolyn Davidson paid in 1971 for creating the Nike Swoosh?

In 1983 Phil Knight gave her a diamond Swoosh ring and 500 shares of stock, since split into 32,000.

Under what name did Jeff Bezos originally found Amazon in July 1994?

He renamed it that November to reflect his ambitions; by 2026 it was the world's largest company by revenue.

The name Google is a misspelling of which mathematical term?

It denotes 1 followed by 100 zeros; the founders' first office was Susan Wojcicki's garage.

Nike was founded in 1964 by Phil Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman under what name?

They started out selling Onitsuka Tiger shoes from Knight's car at track meets; the company is named for the Greek goddess of victory.

Which kitchen appliance did Bill Bowerman use in 1971 to create a new grippy sole for running shoes?

The resulting 1972 'Moon Shoe' got its name because the tread looked like astronauts' footprints.

Which third Apple co-founder sold his stake back for $800 within two weeks of the company's 1976 founding?

Apple became the first US public company worth $1 trillion in 2018.

In which year did Apple become the first publicly traded US company valued at over $1 trillion?

It passed $2 trillion in August 2020 and $4 trillion by late 2025.

Which company did Fusajiro Yamauchi found in Kyoto in 1889 to make hanafuda playing cards?

Even the founder's descendants do not know what the name really means.

IKEA is an acronym of founder Ingvar Kamprad's initials plus what?

Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd; he was 17 when he founded it as a mail-order business in 1943.

The name Lego derives from a Danish phrase meaning what?

Ole Kirk Christiansen began making wooden toys in Billund in 1932; the company now moulds about 36 billion bricks a year.

Nokia was originally established in 1865 as what kind of business?

Fredrik Idestam built it on the Tammerkoski rapids near Tampere; rubber and cables came later.

Samsung began in 1938 as a small trading company dealing in what?

Lee Byung-chul started with forty employees before diversifying into textiles, insurance and electronics.

The name Toyota was chosen partly because it takes how many brush strokes to write?

Eight is a lucky number; the founding family had made automatic looms before cars.

Starbucks opened in 1971 at which Seattle landmark, initially selling coffee beans rather than drinks?

Howard Schultz bought the chain from the founders in 1987 and turned it into an espresso bar empire.

Microsoft was founded in 1975 to sell BASIC interpreters for which early microcomputer?

Paul Allen suggested the name 'Micro-Soft', short for microcomputer software; the demo happened in Albuquerque.

Before Warren Buffett took control in 1965, Berkshire Hathaway was what kind of business?

Its class A shares hit $700,000 each in 2024 because the board refuses to split the stock.

In which city was Warren Buffett born in 1930, giving him his famous nickname?

He founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 with Bill and Melinda Gates, asking billionaires to give away at least half their wealth.

Which company introduced the first moving assembly line for cars in 1913 at its Highland Park factory?

Henry Ford was 39 when he founded the company in 1903 with $28,000 from twelve investors, including the Dodge brothers.

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average debuted on May 26, 1896, how many stocks did it track?

Its starting value was 40.94; today it tracks 30 companies.

The New York Stock Exchange traces its origin to the 1792 agreement signed by 24 brokers under what?

The Buttonwood Agreement set a floor commission; the exchange's opening bell now rings at 9:30 am.

Which stock market opened in 1971 as the world's first fully electronic exchange?

Quotes appeared on cathode-ray terminals, but trades were still done by telephone at first.

'Black Tuesday', the worst day of the 1929 Wall Street crash, fell on which date?

Some 16.4 million shares changed hands; Black Thursday five days earlier had set the previous record of 12.9 million.

Which accounting firm was dissolved after the 2001 Enron scandal?

Kenneth Lay had formed Enron in 1985 by merging Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth.

Which firm made the largest bankruptcy filing in US history on September 15, 2008?

The 'Lehman Shock' was the climax of the subprime mortgage crisis.

What is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble in history?

At its 1637 peak, some bulbs sold for more than ten times a skilled artisan's annual income; Semper Augustus was the priciest.

Which trading firm, established in 1602, is often called the first multinational?

Any Dutch citizen could buy its shares, and the secondary market became the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

In which year did the Supreme Court break up Rockefeller's Standard Oil?

Rockefeller had founded the original Ohio company in 1870.

George Eastman chose the name Kodak in 1888 partly because of his fondness for which letter?

He called it 'a strong, incisive sort of letter'; he and his mother devised the word with an anagram set.

In 2000, Blockbuster turned down the chance to buy Netflix for how much?

Blockbuster went bankrupt in 2010; a single franchised store survives in Bend, Oregon.

Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph as what kind of service?

By 2005 it was shipping a million DVDs a day; by 2026 it had 325 million paid streaming members.

Which company topped the very first Fortune 500 list in 1955?

Fortune editor Edgar P. Smith devised the list; Walmart holds the top spot in the modern era.

Walmart, the world's largest private employer, opened its first store in 1962 in Rogers, in which state?

Sam Walton had earlier run a Ben Franklin franchise; his heirs still own more than half the company.

Elon Musk joined Tesla Motors in 2004 in which role?

He became CEO in 2008; the company is named after inventor Nikola Tesla.

Alibaba's 2014 New York listing raised $25 billion, making it at the time what?

Jack Ma had founded the company in 1999 with 17 friends in his Hangzhou apartment.

Sony was founded in 1946 under what name?

Masaru Ibuka started in a bombed-out department store; the Walkman later became the world's first portable music player.

Adidas and Puma were founded in 1949 by two feuding brothers in which German town?

Adi and Rudolf Dassler had run a shoe factory together, sometimes pedalling a bicycle to power the machines.

How much starting capital did Hewlett and Packard have in their Palo Alto garage in 1938?

Their first big order was oscillators for Walt Disney's Fantasia; the garage is called the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

Charles Ponzi's original 1920 scheme claimed to profit from arbitrage in what?

Bernie Madoff later ran the largest known Ponzi scheme, worth an estimated $65 billion.

Which 1776 book by Adam Smith is regarded as the founding text of modern economics?

He is often called the father of economics or of capitalism.

Shark Tank is the US version of Dragons' Den, which itself remade a show from which country?

The original was The Tigers of Money; Shark Tank premiered on ABC in August 2009.

Brownie Wise built Tupperware's 1950s boom on which selling method?

The party plan let housewives earn an independent income, and Wise was made vice president of marketing in 1951.

How long was Bernie Madoff's federal prison sentence?

He was arrested on December 11, 2008; the year before, his firm had been the sixth-largest market maker in S&P 500 stocks.

In which California city did Richard and Maurice McDonald open their first restaurant in 1940?

The brothers' stated goal was to make $1 million before turning 50; they introduced the Speedee Service System there in 1948.

Reporter John Carreyrou exposed Theranos in 2015 for which newspaper?

He reported that the company was running most tests on traditional machines rather than its own Edison devices.

Art Fry's idea for the Post-it note came from wanting to anchor a bookmark in what?

Spencer Silver's weak adhesive had been a solution without a problem for five years; the canary yellow came from scrap paper in the lab next door.

Under what name did Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Mera originally open Zara in 1975?

A bar two blocks from the A Coruña shop already had that name, so they rearranged the letters they had made.

In which Illinois town did Ray Kroc open his first McDonald's franchise in 1955?

Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers' stake in 1961 and went on to drive the chain's worldwide expansion.

Madoff funded his 1960 brokerage with $5,000 earned as a lifeguard and installing what?

He also borrowed $50,000 from his father-in-law, accountant Saul Alpern, who referred a circle of friends as early clients.

Britain's Bubble Act 1720 banned forming joint-stock companies without what?

The South Sea Company itself had promoted the act shortly before its own shares collapsed in the bubble of that year.

Under what name did 3M test-market Post-it notes in four cities in 1977?

Results were disappointing, so a year later 3M flooded offices in Boise, Idaho with free samples in a campaign known as the Boise Blitz.