Stylus skipping at beginning of record

The problem most likely has to do with the raised bead around the edge of most records.  That bead gives the record strength, and in the old days, that bead also kept record surfaces from touching each other when records were stacked for automatic play.

When you set the needle down on the top of that bead, it slides downhill and gains momentum that can carry it past the first grooves it encounters.  Do what you have been doing already--set the needle down further into the record.  With practice, you will still be setting down before the music commences.

Don’t remember. :-) But if faced with it now the first thing I’d try would be to increase (slightly) the VTF and see if that solved the problem. VTF is a moving target but your cartridge maker should have spec’d a range. The other possibility (if not probability) is that you have the anti-skate set slightly off and it is presently walking off the light grove at the beginning of the record until it gets into the deeper groove where the music resides and the physical nature of the groove arrests its movement. If you can correct the problem with adjustments of both, I’d select the antiskate adjustment - likely to cause the least amount of change to the signal. Have fun.................!

BTW I just read larryi's suggestion - he could be right - simple to rule out. 

As the record revolves, the stylus naturally wants to skate toward the center of the record, and anti-skate is meant to keep this from happening.  So do your best to get the amount of anti-skate as dead-on as possible.

My method of achieving this is to put my least-warped LP onto the turntable and placing a nice, tiny spirit level on top of it. Once the LP/platter combo is leveled, home in on the proper amount of anti-skate force by adjusting anti-skate force a little bit at a time until, when you lower the needle into the moving groove, the tonearm-cartridge duo doesn't want to shift either forwards or backwards when it touches down..

I got to say, too, that LP edge-warp is one of the banes of the analogue universe.

I'd also look at tracking force, anything less than 2 grams is suspect.