Starting out even.

[Suicide Junkie]

You can also:

1) Have a third-party player play the first 30 turns: That person will not touch anything except research, and will research according to the instructions of each player.
Once the research is done, the savegame can be uploaded to PBW as the first turn.

All players will then start with their own chosen techs.

2) Add racial techs that give certain facilities/components earlier than normal.
EG: "Point Defense Research" gives a copy of PDC I, and gives PDC II when you research PDC tech level 1, etc...

[capnq]

It sounds like you've been starting games from the Quick Start screen rather than New Game. There isn't any way to change the default Quick Start settings. The New Game Set-Up screens let you define the starting tech level, among other things. If a "Low" tech start still seems like more than you want, you can mod the TechArea files as Deathstalker has described.