Hi Steven and welcome to the forum,
Account holds are going to be next to impossible to avoid, if even possible at all if your gateway accounts are brand new. I'm not aware of anyone that allows fresh accounts to go unchecked at the moment, too many scams getting around. Someone may know of a gateway not doing holds, but I'm afraid I have no idea.
One way around it is to start off selling a few cheap things from around the house so you don't need cash flow. Let them hold the account and then when released, start trading. You still have to be careful because if all of s sudden your account goes from doing transactions between 20 and 50 dollars to 100 - 200 dollars for example, that can trigger a red flag and can cause another hold.
To avoid that, if you go with the sell items from around the house plan, then after the account is released, contact the gateway provider and tell them that you are going to be starting a business and you now expect the account to be processing transactions of around X dollars per sale.
That then gives them a heads up and in many cases they can then work with you. My experience has always been that it is far easier to try and work with gateway providers than to try and go around them.