out of the gate
(idiomatic) At or from the very beginning; from the outset; immediately upon starting.
Yeah, we shot ourselves in the foot right out of the gate. The guy who ran it at first misled pretty much everybody about how much capital we had. He said we had enough to go three years without making money, and we had enough to go three weeks. Al Franken
Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo. Camille Paglia
One Tree Hill was my very first television audition; it was a fairytale. I feel really lucky to have that level of success right out of the gate. Hilarie Burton