Founded in 2012, the organization holds several annual competitions, with each company playing on behalf of a charity of their choice.

The inaugural games were held on January 21, 2012, at uShip's headquarters and featured Adlucent, Boundless Network, BuildASign, Mass Relevance (now part of Spredfast), SpareFoot, Spredfast, uShip and WhaleShark Media (now RetailMeNot).

[3] SpareFoot won the next three Austin editions of Startup Games from 2013 to 2015, playing for Kure It Cancer Research.

[5][6] Startup Games was founded as a collaboration between the eight original competing companies.

It has since been independently incorporated as a non-profit company, with one of the founding members, Gillian Wilson, serving as president.