It looks like a bit of a PITA to setup a fully featured DC brushless controller... is there any way to shortcut this? Or is it going to be a whole chunk of work no matter what.

What's likely to happen if I just make up some sort of 'fixed' sequence to send to the motors which includes a startup routine? I know that if the motor got stopped, it may not start without assistance, but would the motor be likely to actually move properly? For now I just want to get it spinning, and it has a very low load on it, which is static, so once it's running there shouldn't be too many synch issues.