Yeah I think so. If you start at the tip, then every other civ on the map is potential competition for all the land going towards the core. While if you start in the middle of the arm, there's the chance you may have only 1 civ, or if you're lucky, 0, to have to deal with going towards the tip. And the 1 planet strat doesn't stop you from going to war and taking planets - you just need to make sure to purge all of the population and get back to a single planet asap, because tech and unity scale based on # of planets owned.
One thing I wonder would be interesting, is if you get to high influence early on, could you re-settle your capital elsewhere and just move your population? Especially if you find a superior planet in terms of modifiers. In the end, the cost would be influence + minerals + some small opportunity cost.