80 Silicon Valley Tech Culture Trivia Questions with Answers

80 public questions with answers, drawn from the well. How many can you answer?

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which company launched its cloud-based customer relationship management service in 1999, helping popularize software as a service?

Answer

Salesforce

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which Silicon Valley company developed the Post-it Note after a weak adhesive was invented at 3M?

Answer

3M

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which Silicon Valley company introduced the NeXT Computer in 1988 after Steve Jobs left Apple?

Answer

NeXT

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which company was founded in 2008 after its founders rented out air mattresses in San Francisco?

Answer

Airbnb

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which company founded the Android Open Source Project after acquiring Android, Inc. in 2005?

Answer

Google

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which company created the Java programming language in the 1990s?

Answer

Sun Microsystems

Hard Hard difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which Silicon Valley company introduced the first commercially available webcam, the QuickCam, in 1994?

Answer

Connectix

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which Silicon Valley company introduced the UNIX operating system for commercial workstations through its Sun-1 computer?

Answer

Sun Microsystems

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

What was the name of the informal group of former PayPal employees who later founded major technology companies?

Answer

PayPal Mafia

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which company did Elon Musk co-found in 1999 as an online bank before it merged with Confinity?

Answer

X.com

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

What is the name of Google’s annual developer conference, first held in 2008?

Answer

Google I/O

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which Silicon Valley company introduced the first iPhone in 2007?

Answer

Apple

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which nonprofit digital-rights organization was founded in San Francisco in 1990 by John Perry Barlow and others?

Answer

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which company created the first Android phone, the HTC Dream, released commercially in 2008?

Answer

HTC

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

At which 2004 event did Google sell shares to the public using a Dutch auction?

Answer

Google IPO

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which venture-capital firm did Don Valentine found in 1972, helping shape Silicon Valley startup culture?

Answer

Sequoia Capital

Hard Hard difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which 1970s Silicon Valley company made the Altair 8800’s first commercially successful microcomputer kit?

Answer

MITS

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which Stanford-affiliated research park, established in 1951, helped create the institutional foundation of Silicon Valley?

Answer

Stanford Research Park

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

In what year did the first Burning Man event take place at San Francisco’s Baker Beach?

Answer

1986

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

What was the name of the eight engineers who left Shockley Semiconductor in 1957 to form Fairchild Semiconductor?

Answer

The Traitorous Eight

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

What term describes a privately held startup valued at $1 billion or more, popularized by Aileen Lee in 2013?

Answer

Unicorn

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

What percentage of work time did Google’s famous “20% time” policy encourage employees to spend on personal projects?

Answer

20 percent

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which California city is the headquarters of Apple, the company founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak?

Answer

Cupertino

Hard Hard difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which Silicon Valley company introduced the first widely successful commercial graphical web browser, Mosaic's successor Netscape Navigator, in 1994?

Answer

Netscape

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which company did Google acquire in 2006 to obtain the video-sharing service YouTube?

Answer

YouTube

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which 1984 Apple commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, introduced the Macintosh during Super Bowl XVIII?

Answer

“1984”

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which accelerator, founded by Paul Graham in 2005, popularized seed funding in exchange for a small startup equity stake?

Answer

Y Combinator

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

What was the original name of Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg launched it from Harvard in 2004?

Answer

TheFacebook

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

In what year did Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore found Intel, a company central to Silicon Valley's semiconductor culture?

Answer

1968

Easy Easy difficulty.
Silicon Valley Tech Culture

Which California address is recognized as the birthplace of Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Valley's garage-startup legend?

Answer

367 Addison Avenue