Tech Founders Quiz
Garages, dorm rooms and a Denny's booth: 15 questions on who founded Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla.
Who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Paul Allen
Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 4, 1975, after writing a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800. The company moved to the Seattle area in 1979.
Allen came up with the name Micro-Soft, with a hyphen, as a blend of microcomputer and software; the hyphen was dropped in 1976.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 to sell which product online first?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Books
Bezos chose books because there were millions of titles in print, far more than any physical store could stock, and they were easy to ship. Amazon sold its first book from his Bellevue garage in July 1995.
Bezos picked the name partly because it began with A and would appear near the top of alphabetical web listings.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google while they were PhD students at which university?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Stanford
Page and Brin met at Stanford in 1995 and built their search engine as a research project there, running it on Stanford servers before incorporating Google in September 1998 in a Menlo Park garage.
Their first search engine was called BackRub because it analysed the web's back links to rank pages.
Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded Netflix in 1997 as what kind of business?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
DVD rental by mail
Netflix launched in 1998 in Scotts Valley, California, mailing DVDs in red envelopes, and introduced its no late fees subscription in 1999. Streaming did not arrive until 2007, and the DVD service finally closed in 2023.
The founders tested the idea by mailing a CD to Hastings's house to see whether a disc could survive the US postal system.
Jensen Huang co-founded which chip company in 1993, reportedly planning it at a Denny's in San Jose?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Nvidia
Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem founded Nvidia on April 5, 1993, to build chips for 3D graphics in PC games. Its GPUs later became the engine of the artificial intelligence boom.
Huang's first job was washing dishes at Denny's at age 15, and the chain has since dedicated a booth to him at its East San Jose restaurant.
Which electric car company was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Tesla
Eberhard and Tarpenning, who had previously built the Rocketbook e-reader, incorporated Tesla Motors on July 1, 2003. Elon Musk led the $7.5 million Series A round in February 2004 and became chairman.
A 2009 settlement of Eberhard's lawsuit allows five people, including Musk and J.B. Straubel, to call themselves Tesla co-founders.
What was Amazon originally called when Jeff Bezos incorporated it in 1994?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Cadabra
Bezos registered the company as Cadabra, Inc., short for abracadabra, but changed the name within months after his lawyer misheard it as cadaver. He settled on Amazon after browsing a dictionary for the world's largest river.
Bezos also registered relentless.com in 1994, and that address still redirects to Amazon's homepage today.
Larry Ellison co-founded which software company in 1977, originally called Software Development Laboratories?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Oracle
Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories in Santa Clara in June 1977, inspired by Edgar Codd's papers on relational databases. Their first customer was the CIA, whose project codename gave the company its later name.
SAP was founded in Germany in 1972 by five former IBM engineers, five years before Oracle.
Michael Dell started his computer company in 1984 from a dorm room at which university?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
University of Texas
Dell was a pre-med freshman at the University of Texas at Austin when he began assembling and selling upgraded PCs with $1,000 in capital, trading as PC's Limited. He dropped out at the end of the year to run the business full time.
At 27 Dell became the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and he took the firm private again in 2013 in a $24 billion buyout.
Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify in 2006 in which city?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Stockholm
Spotify was founded in Stockholm in April 2006 and launched in October 2008 as a legal alternative to the piracy that had devastated the music industry. It did not reach the United States until July 2011.
Ek had been chief technology officer of Stardoll, while Lorentzon co-founded the advertising network TradeDoubler.
Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk founded which company in 2008?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Airbnb
Chesky and Gebbia rented air mattresses in their San Francisco apartment to design conference visitors in 2007, then launched Airbedandbreakfast.com with Blecharczyk on August 11, 2008. The name was shortened to Airbnb in 2009.
To stay afloat in 2008, the founders sold limited edition Obama O's and Cap'n McCain's cereal boxes, raising about $30,000.
Which organisation was launched in December 2015 with Sam Altman and Elon Musk as its co-chairs?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
OpenAI
OpenAI was announced on December 11, 2015, as a non-profit research lab with pledges of more than $1 billion from backers including Altman, Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever were among its founding team.
Musk left OpenAI's board in February 2018, and the lab later released ChatGPT in November 2022.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started Hewlett-Packard in 1939 in a garage in which California city?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Palo Alto
The two Stanford graduates founded HP in a rented garage at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, settling the name order with a coin toss. Their first product was an audio oscillator, and Walt Disney bought several to test the sound for Fantasia.
The garage at 367 Addison Avenue is a California Historical Landmark officially designated the Birthplace of Silicon Valley.
Jack Ma founded Alibaba in 1999 from his apartment in which Chinese city?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Hangzhou
Ma gathered 17 friends and colleagues in his Hangzhou apartment in February 1999 to launch Alibaba.com, a marketplace connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. The company is still headquartered in the city.
Ma was an English teacher who had failed the national university entrance exam twice and was reportedly turned down for a job at KFC.
Which electronics company was founded in 1946 as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Sony
Ibuka opened a radio repair shop in bomb-damaged Tokyo and incorporated Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo with Morita on May 7, 1946. The company adopted the Sony name in 1958, blending the Latin sonus for sound with the slang term sonny.
Its first consumer product was an electric rice cooker that reportedly burned the rice, and it later produced Japan's first tape recorder.
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All Technology quizzes →About the Tech Founders Quiz
Nvidia was planned over breakfast at a Denny's. Amazon was incorporated as Cadabra until a lawyer misheard it as cadaver. Tesla's founders were not named Elon Musk. The origin stories of the world's biggest technology companies are full of surprises, and this quiz tests how many you actually know.
Across 15 questions you will match founders to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Nvidia, Tesla, Oracle, Dell, Spotify, Airbnb, Hewlett-Packard, Alibaba, Sony and OpenAI, and learn where each one started. The first few are famous names everyone knows; the later ones reward people who read founder biographies for fun.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Which companies feature in this tech founders quiz?
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Nvidia, Netflix, Oracle, Dell, Spotify, Airbnb, Hewlett-Packard, Alibaba, Sony and OpenAI, with a question on who founded each and where.
Did Elon Musk found Tesla?
No. Tesla Motors was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk led its first big funding round in 2004 and became chairman, and a 2009 legal settlement allows him to be called a co-founder.
How hard is this quiz?
It is rated Medium. Questions on Microsoft, Amazon and Google are easy for most people, while the ones on Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Alibaba and Sony need a deeper knowledge of tech history.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975?
Paul Allen Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 4, 1975, after writing a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800. The company moved to the Seattle area in 1979. Allen came up with the name Micro-Soft, with a hyphen, as a blend of microcomputer and software; the hyphen was dropped in 1976. - Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 to sell which product online first?
Books Bezos chose books because there were millions of titles in print, far more than any physical store could stock, and they were easy to ship. Amazon sold its first book from his Bellevue garage in July 1995. Bezos picked the name partly because it began with A and would appear near the top of alphabetical web listings. - Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google while they were PhD students at which university?
Stanford Page and Brin met at Stanford in 1995 and built their search engine as a research project there, running it on Stanford servers before incorporating Google in September 1998 in a Menlo Park garage. Their first search engine was called BackRub because it analysed the web's back links to rank pages. - Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded Netflix in 1997 as what kind of business?
DVD rental by mail Netflix launched in 1998 in Scotts Valley, California, mailing DVDs in red envelopes, and introduced its no late fees subscription in 1999. Streaming did not arrive until 2007, and the DVD service finally closed in 2023. The founders tested the idea by mailing a CD to Hastings's house to see whether a disc could survive the US postal system. - Jensen Huang co-founded which chip company in 1993, reportedly planning it at a Denny's in San Jose?
Nvidia Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem founded Nvidia on April 5, 1993, to build chips for 3D graphics in PC games. Its GPUs later became the engine of the artificial intelligence boom. Huang's first job was washing dishes at Denny's at age 15, and the chain has since dedicated a booth to him at its East San Jose restaurant. - Which electric car company was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning?
Tesla Eberhard and Tarpenning, who had previously built the Rocketbook e-reader, incorporated Tesla Motors on July 1, 2003. Elon Musk led the $7.5 million Series A round in February 2004 and became chairman. A 2009 settlement of Eberhard's lawsuit allows five people, including Musk and J.B. Straubel, to call themselves Tesla co-founders. - What was Amazon originally called when Jeff Bezos incorporated it in 1994?
Cadabra Bezos registered the company as Cadabra, Inc., short for abracadabra, but changed the name within months after his lawyer misheard it as cadaver. He settled on Amazon after browsing a dictionary for the world's largest river. Bezos also registered relentless.com in 1994, and that address still redirects to Amazon's homepage today. - Larry Ellison co-founded which software company in 1977, originally called Software Development Laboratories?
Oracle Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories in Santa Clara in June 1977, inspired by Edgar Codd's papers on relational databases. Their first customer was the CIA, whose project codename gave the company its later name. SAP was founded in Germany in 1972 by five former IBM engineers, five years before Oracle. - Michael Dell started his computer company in 1984 from a dorm room at which university?
University of Texas Dell was a pre-med freshman at the University of Texas at Austin when he began assembling and selling upgraded PCs with $1,000 in capital, trading as PC's Limited. He dropped out at the end of the year to run the business full time. At 27 Dell became the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and he took the firm private again in 2013 in a $24 billion buyout. - Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify in 2006 in which city?
Stockholm Spotify was founded in Stockholm in April 2006 and launched in October 2008 as a legal alternative to the piracy that had devastated the music industry. It did not reach the United States until July 2011. Ek had been chief technology officer of Stardoll, while Lorentzon co-founded the advertising network TradeDoubler. - Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk founded which company in 2008?
Airbnb Chesky and Gebbia rented air mattresses in their San Francisco apartment to design conference visitors in 2007, then launched Airbedandbreakfast.com with Blecharczyk on August 11, 2008. The name was shortened to Airbnb in 2009. To stay afloat in 2008, the founders sold limited edition Obama O's and Cap'n McCain's cereal boxes, raising about $30,000. - Which organisation was launched in December 2015 with Sam Altman and Elon Musk as its co-chairs?
OpenAI OpenAI was announced on December 11, 2015, as a non-profit research lab with pledges of more than $1 billion from backers including Altman, Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever were among its founding team. Musk left OpenAI's board in February 2018, and the lab later released ChatGPT in November 2022. - Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started Hewlett-Packard in 1939 in a garage in which California city?
Palo Alto The two Stanford graduates founded HP in a rented garage at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, settling the name order with a coin toss. Their first product was an audio oscillator, and Walt Disney bought several to test the sound for Fantasia. The garage at 367 Addison Avenue is a California Historical Landmark officially designated the Birthplace of Silicon Valley. - Jack Ma founded Alibaba in 1999 from his apartment in which Chinese city?
Hangzhou Ma gathered 17 friends and colleagues in his Hangzhou apartment in February 1999 to launch Alibaba.com, a marketplace connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. The company is still headquartered in the city. Ma was an English teacher who had failed the national university entrance exam twice and was reportedly turned down for a job at KFC. - Which electronics company was founded in 1946 as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita?
Sony Ibuka opened a radio repair shop in bomb-damaged Tokyo and incorporated Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo with Morita on May 7, 1946. The company adopted the Sony name in 1958, blending the Latin sonus for sound with the slang term sonny. Its first consumer product was an electric rice cooker that reportedly burned the rice, and it later produced Japan's first tape recorder.
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