1.
If someone or something starts out as a particular thing, they are that thing at the beginning although they change later.
Daly was a fast-talking Irish-American who had started out as a salesman...
What started out as fun quickly became hard work.
PHRASAL VERB: V P as n, V P as n
2.
If you ~ by doing something, you do it at the beginning of an activity.
We started out by looking at ways in which big projects such as railways could be financed by the private sector...
PHRASAL VERB: V P by -ing