I did start with a ~50mm lens, but without a tracker. My camera can do up to 30s auto exposures, but those exhibit star trails at 50mm. I limit myself to 10s-15s exposures, and shoot a few hundred of them. The stars move, but the stacker (I use deepskystacker.free.fr) aligns them before stacking them. Though I'll add that DSS has a pretty steep learning curve of its own.

I agree that a beginner can't jump into astrophotography with a telescope. I'm of the opinion that learning with a camera and a tripod will teach a beginner to have reasonable expectations.