I'm not an expert on organic synthesis, but your question isn't a typical one asked. You can start with any starting material, if you want to "play" with all the synthetics steps. With a straight chain alcohol, you can make any ethers, and with ethers, you can make all sorts of orgainic starting materials. If someone is in the mood to do a synthesis as difficultly as possible, you can start with anything. Look at this challenge:
http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=61257.msg218660#new someone wants to make a complex pharmaceutical, and they decided to start with methane gas. So you're really going to have to answer for yourself, what does this question mean, when it asks for starting material. Everyone else is trying to ask what you've learned recently, because we figure that's the point of the exercise. Or maybe you've been given a "lost on a desert island" problem, where you make any organic compound, from the simplest organic skeletons, and you're told you can use "any inorganic reagents" and we assume, this is one of those desert islands with abundant easily isolated rare-earth elements, pressure vessels, and cryogenic storage for liquid ammonia.