Where Did These Companies Start Out? Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Google's first offices were in which high-sounding city?

Answer: Palo Alto, California

Google first started in 1995 as a research project for two PH.D. students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, but wasn't formerly incorporated as a company until 1998. In 1999 the company moved to offices in Palo Alto before leasing an office complex in Mountain View, California, in 2003 which is known as the Googleplex.

2. Oooh! I fancy a Big Mac. Where was the original McDonald's restaurant?

Answer: San Bernardino, California

McDonald's is the world's largest fast-food company. The very first McDonald's restaurant was opened in 1940 and was known as the McDonald's Bar-B-Q restaurant in San Bernardino.

3. Ernst & Young are one of the world's biggest companies offering Professional Services to other business around the world. Where were they founded?

Answer: London

Arthur Young and Alwin C Ernst had their own companies dealing with international clients. The two never actually met, dying within a few months of each other in 1948. The Ernst & Young company was formed by the merger of their separate firms, Ernst & Whinney and Arthur Young & Co, in 1989. Their HQ has an unusual address, 1 More London, London.

4. Nokia, when founded in Finland, was actually a paper mill, situated in the body of water known as the ___________ rapids. It sounds vaguely Russian to me. Where was it?

Answer: Tammerkoski

You may think Nokia is a young company but it was actually founded in 1865. That's right! 1865 not 1965. A merger of several companies in 1960 brought Nokia into the area of electronics and in the early 1990s they decided to make telecommunications their core business. Nokia is based in Espoo, Finland.

5. The company now known as ExxonMobil was originally founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1870. It was at that time called Standard Oil. The question is, where?

Answer: Cleveland, Ohio

Following a U.S. Supreme Court judgement, Standard Oil was broken up into 34 independent companies in 1911 including Jersey Standard which introduced a new brand ("Esso") in 1926, being a phonetic rendition of the initials of Standard Oil, 'S' and 'O'. In 1972, Jersey Standard changed its name to Exxon Corporation. ExxonMobil was formed by the merger of Exxon and Mobil in 1999.

6. Samsung started in business in 1938 selling dried fish and vegetables to China from the city of Taegu (now known as Daegu). Where is Daegu?

Answer: South Korea

Samsung diversified very quickly into other types of business such as insurance and textiles and in 1969 entered the world of electronics. Samsung today is one of the world's biggest companies companies with a reputation for quality.

7. In which American city was Wells Fargo set up?

Answer: San Francisco

Wells Fargo was founded in 1852 by Henry Wells and William Fargo. They opened up in San Francisco and soon gained the trust of the gold prospectors of California. Who can forget those old movies showing Wells Fargo stagecoaches rushing hither and thither to deliver items to all and sundry, not to mention carrying travelers between towns and cities?

8. In which city was Amazon.com founded?

Answer: Seattle, USA

Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. He called the company "Cadabra" but it changed to Amazon in 1995 when it went online. He chose the name because the river was the biggest in the world and he wanted his fledgling company to also be the biggest in the world.

9. The chemical company BASF started in which country?

Answer: Germany

Originally known as Badische Anilin - und Soda-Fabrik, the four letters BASF are now the registered trademark of the company. It was formed in 1865 and mainly produced dyes and other chemicals required for dye production but is today a global manufacture of chemicals, plastics, coatings etc and is also involved in natural gas exploration. It's headquarters are at Ludwigshaven, Germany.

10. Now we look at the world of banking. Where were the original headquarters of HSBC?

Answer: Hong Kong

HSBC is one of the world's largest banks as measured by its assets. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was founded in 1865, in of all places, Hong Kong - who'd have guessed it? 'Corporation' was added the following year. Hong Kong was under the control of the UK by virtue of agreements made with China in the 19th century.

It had to be returned to China in 1997, so the headquarters of HSBC were moved to London in 1993.

11. Where did 'Big Blue', otherwise known as IBM, have their first headquarters?

Answer: Endicott, New York

In 1911, Charles Flint brought together several companies under the name "The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company" (CTR) in Endicott, New York. In 1924, the company changed its name to "International Business Machines Corporation". IBM moved its headquarters to Armonk, New York in 1964.

12. The first Walmart store was opened in 1962 in a relatively small place. Where was that?

Answer: Rogers, Arkansas

Sam Walton opened his first Walmart store in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Just 47 years later the company's sales revenue had reached $400 BILLION and in 2014 it became the world's biggest company by revenue.

13. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne formed Apple Computers in the garage of Paul and Clara Jobs home in 1976. Where was this?

Answer: Los Altos, California

Apple Inc was created in 1977, but by that time Ron Wayne had sold his 10% shareholding back to Jobs and Wozniak for $500-$800, (I have seen both figures quoted). What an unfortunate decision to have made. Apple's current HQ in Cupertino, California is shaped like a 4-storey doughnut and has been likened to a spaceship. Around 13,000 employees work there.

14. Fancy a coffee? Where did Starbucks open their first coffee shop?

Answer: Seattle, Washington

Starbucks' first store was opened in 1971 in Seattle's Pike Place Market. The name Starbuck comes from the name of the Chief Mate on the whaler "Pequod" in the novel "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville.

15. Frederick Smith created Federal Express in 1971 in which American state?

Answer: Arkansas

Smith wrote a paper in 1965 while an undergraduate at Yale University pointing out the problems of shipping items by air as most existing air shippers used passenger airlines to carry their packages which limited the destinations they could fly to from any given city.

In 1971 he bought a small Arkansas air cargo company and soon realized that there was a huge opportunity to make money by delivering items by air within two days using dedicated cargo aircraft flying to destinations all over America.

It officially began operations in 1973. The rest as they say, is history.

Source: Author Spontini

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor stedman before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Some large companies are known to hundreds of millions of people, probably including you. I'm certain you will have heard of most of those in this quiz. But do you know where they started?

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