100 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.

Play-Doh was first made in 1930s Cincinnati as a putty for cleaning coal soot off what?

Wallpaper was the target: the grocer Kroger wanted a putty to lift coal residue from it. When demand for cleaning putty shrank after World War II, it was reworked as a modeling compound for schools.

The insurance market Lloyd's of London began in the 1680s in what kind of establishment?

A coffee house on Tower Street, owned by Edward Lloyd, drew ship owners and merchants trading news. It soon became the recognised place to buy marine insurance.

Which tire maker began publishing a restaurant and hotel guide in 1900 to encourage motorists to drive more?

Michelin launched the guide when France had fewer than 3,000 cars on its roads. More driving meant more demand for cars, and so for the tires the two founding brothers sold.

Which soft drink was created in wartime Germany after an embargo cut off supplies of Coca-Cola syrup?

Fanta was devised by Max Keith, head of Coca-Cola's German arm, from what he could still get: sugar beet, whey and apple pomace.

The first product scanned with a UPC barcode at a checkout, in Ohio in 1974, was a pack of what?

Chewing gum made retail history at a Marsh supermarket in Troy: a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit was scanned at 8:01 a.m. on 26 June 1974.

On Wall Street, a market that falls 20% or more from its peak is named after which animal?

Bear markets take their name from the 'bear-skin jobbers' of 18th-century London, traders who sold a bear's skin before catching the bear, meaning shares they did not yet own.

Ferruccio Lamborghini made his money building which machines before founding his sports car company in 1963?

Tractors came first: Ferruccio founded Lamborghini Trattori in 1948, and also made boilers and air conditioners before turning to supercars.

The convenience store chain 7-Eleven, once called Tote'm Stores, took its new name in 1946 from what?

Its opening hours gave the chain its name: stores began trading from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week, which was unprecedented at the time.

The energy drink Red Bull was adapted in the 1980s from Krating Daeng, a tonic first sold in which country?

Thailand is where Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz tried Krating Daeng in 1982 and found it cured his jet lag. The original was popular with truck drivers and laborers.

Ruth Handler named which Mattel doll, launched at a New York toy fair in 1959, after her own daughter?

Barbie was named after Barbara Handler, who reportedly hated being known as the inspiration. The design borrowed from a German doll, Bild Lilli, that Ruth Handler found on a trip to Europe.

The shopping day Black Friday got its modern meaning from police describing traffic chaos in which US city?

Philadelphia police used the phrase for the crowds and jams that opened the Christmas shopping season. In 1961 the city's merchants tried to rebrand the day 'Big Friday', and it flopped.

Which brewery's managing director dreamed up a famous book of records after an argument on a 1951 shooting trip?

Guinness boss Sir Hugh Beaver missed a golden plover, then argued over which game bird was Europe's fastest. He wanted a book that could settle such rows in pubs, and it first appeared in 1955.

Colonel Sanders sold the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in 1952 to a restaurant owner in which state?

Utah got there first: restaurant owner Pete Harman took the recipe, and his sign painter coined the name Kentucky Fried Chicken. Harman also introduced the cardboard bucket in 1957.

Which device did Kodak engineer Steven Sasson build in 1975, decades before it overtook film?

A digital camera, the first self-contained handheld one, came out of Sasson's lab at Kodak. The prototype was not shown to the public until a company presentation in 2000.

Wall Street is named after a defensive wall put up in 1653 by colonists from which European country?

The Netherlands ran the colony, then called New Amsterdam, and Peter Stuyvesant ordered a wooden palisade against an English attack by land. The wall came down in 1699.

The coffee chain Starbucks borrowed its name from the chief mate in which American novel?

Moby-Dick supplied Starbuck, the chief mate, though co-founder Gordon Bowker called the link coincidental: the founders mainly liked how the name sounded.

At which university did Mark Zuckerberg launch Facebook in 2004, at first for fellow students only?

Harvard students were the only people allowed to join at first. A year earlier Zuckerberg had built a site called Facemash there, and the new one began life as TheFacebook.

Which food company adopted the slogan '57 Varieties' in 1896, when it already sold more than 60 products?

Heinz chose the number although the true count was higher, and the reason for 57 is still unclear. The first product promoted under the slogan was prepared horseradish.

Which product was the only thing Amazon sold when its website went live in July 1995?

Books were the whole catalogue at first, sourced directly from wholesalers and publishers. The company later began its international operations by buying online booksellers in the UK and Germany.

Which photo-sharing app began development in San Francisco as Burbn, a mobile check-in app?

Instagram grew out of Burbn, built by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Systrom closed a $500,000 seed funding round in March 2010 while still working on the check-in version.

The word 'salary' comes from the Latin 'salarium', which is rooted in the Latin word for which commodity?

Salt gives us 'salary': the Latin 'salarium' is said to have begun as a soldier's allowance for buying it. Rome's Via Salaria was the road the Sabines used to fetch sea salt.

The word 'bankrupt' comes from the Italian 'banca rotta', which literally means a broken what?

Bench is the literal sense: a 'banca' was a moneylender's bench or shop. The tale that failed lenders had theirs smashed is probably a figure of speech, not a real custom.

The term 'blue chip', used for large and reliable companies, comes from which game?

Poker gave the stock market the phrase: in the simplest American chip sets, the blue chips are worth more than the white and the red ones.

Venture capitalist Aileen Lee coined which nickname in 2013 for a private startup valued at over $1 billion?

Unicorn was her choice because the mythical animal captured how rare such startups were. Those valued at over $10 billion have since been dubbed decacorns.

In a SWOT analysis, what does the T stand for, alongside strengths, weaknesses and opportunities?

Threats are outside factors that could cause trouble, and like opportunities they count as external. Strengths and weaknesses make up the internal half of the grid.

In E. Jerome McCarthy's '4 Ps' of marketing, which P joins product, price and place?

Promotion completes McCarthy's set. Service marketers later stretched the list to 7 Ps by adding people, process and physical evidence.

The term 'angel investor' first described wealthy backers who kept struggling productions alive in which industry?

Broadway theater producers called their wealthy rescuers angels, because the money saved shows that would otherwise have had to shut down. The label later moved to startup funding.

The word 'boycott' comes from Charles Boycott, an English land agent shunned by a whole community in which country?

Ireland's County Mayo was the scene: Boycott ran Lord Erne's estate near Lough Mask until locals ostracized him in 1880, and he left the country that December.

The Latin maxim 'caveat emptor' tells which party in a sale to beware?

The buyer is the one warned: the phrase means 'let the buyer beware'. Its mirror image, 'caveat venditor', shifts the burden to the person selling.

Which Franciscan friar, a collaborator of Leonardo da Vinci, is called the father of accounting for a 1494 book?

Luca Pacioli published one of the first printed descriptions of double-entry bookkeeping, the method Venetian merchants already used, inside a math textbook issued in Venice.

YouTube was founded in 2005 by three former employees of which technology company?

PayPal alumni Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim started the video site after growing wealthy when eBay bought their old employer.

Which animation studio was spun off from Lucasfilm's computer division in 1986 with funding from Steve Jobs?

Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group inside Lucasfilm. Jobs became its majority shareholder when it was set up as a separate corporation seven years later.

Andrew Carnegie made his fortune in which industry before paying for public libraries across the United States?

Steel made Carnegie one of the richest Americans in history. His giving was inspired by a colonel who opened a personal library of 400 volumes to working boys every Saturday night.

Madam C. J. Walker, often cited as America's first self-made woman millionaire, built her fortune selling what?

Hair care products for Black women were her line, prompted by her own scalp ailments and hair loss. She first learned the trade from her brothers, who were barbers.

James Dyson went through about 5,127 prototypes over five years before launching which household product in 1983?

A vacuum cleaner, the G-Force, was the result. Dyson was partly supported through those years by his wife's pay as an art teacher.

FedEx founder Fred Smith once took the company's last $5,000 to Las Vegas and won $27,000 playing what?

Blackjack winnings covered a $24,000 fuel bill after a crucial loan was turned down, which kept the young delivery company going.

Which brother co-founded the Disney studio with Walt Disney in 1923 and looked after its finances?

Roy was recovering from tuberculosis in a Los Angeles veterans' home when Walt turned up late one night to ask for help starting a cartoon studio.

Airbnb's founders raised $30,000 in 2008 selling novelty boxes of what, named after Barack Obama and John McCain?

Breakfast cereal, sold mostly at the Democratic National Convention, brought in the cash. Soon afterwards Paul Graham invited the founders into his Y Combinator incubator.

The e-commerce platform Shopify grew out of an online store its founders built in 2004 to sell what?

Snowboarding gear was the product, sold through a shop called Snowdevil. Tobias Lütke built the store's software himself in two months, and it was relaunched as a platform in 2006.

Which British bank installed a pioneering cash machine at its Enfield branch in north London in June 1967?

Barclays beat a machine from Sweden's savings banks into service by just nine days. A rival system at Westminster Bank followed a month later.

Which car maker's logo of four linked rings stands for the four firms that merged in 1932 as Auto Union?

Audi shared the badge with Horch, DKW and Wanderer, the other three firms in the merger. Volkswagen revived the Audi name in 1965 after buying Auto Union.

Which car brand's name means 'I roll' in Latin and was first registered as a trademark for ball bearings?

Volvo was coined by the Swedish bearing maker SKF, which dropped the idea and used its own initials instead. The name came back in the 1920s, when car building began within the SKF group.

The German car maker BMW started out during World War I producing what?

Aircraft engines for the German air force were BMW's first products. The name dates from 1917, when Rapp Motorenwerke was renamed Bayerische Motoren Werke.

Which technology company, founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, is nicknamed 'Big Blue'?

IBM's nickname is usually traced to its blue logo and to an old unofficial dress code of white shirts with blue suits. The clumsy original name was dropped in 1924.

Which company did engineer Martin Cooper work for when he made the first public call from a handheld cell phone in 1973?

Motorola's Martin Cooper rang his counterpart at rival Bell Labs from a Manhattan sidewalk. It took his team ten more years to bring the phone to market.

The initials of South Korea's LG come from a 1983 merger of the electronics firm GoldStar with which company?

Lucky began in 1947 with Lucky Cream, the first Korean make-up cream, and later moved into plastics. GoldStar went on to produce South Korea's first radio.

The candy maker Haribo takes its name from founder Hans Riegel and which German city, where it began?

Bonn supplies the last two letters: Ha-ri-bo is short for Hans Riegel Bonn. The firm began in the city's Kessenich district.

Which English brewery's red triangle became the first trade mark registered under Britain's 1875 trade mark law?

Bass, legend has it, had an employee queue overnight on New Year's Eve to be first in line when the register opened in 1876. The triangle marked its pale ale.

The board game Monopoly was inspired by The Landlord's Game, patented in 1904 by which inventor?

Elizabeth Magie designed it to teach the land-tax ideas of Georgism, hoping children who played would learn to be suspicious of unfairness.

Which workplace chat app began as an internal tool at Tiny Speck, a studio building an online game called Glitch?

Slack outlived the game it was built for: by late 2012 founder Stewart Butterfield had realized that Glitch was never going to be profitable.