I've found that different bonuses affect your playstyle in different ways. Here's what I found as "interesting" starting bonuses:
Racial stats:
+60% to Influence: Before the reduction in starting influence generation, this was an easy way to win. Between that and an influence resource, I once had a game where 2-3 times, I'd flip planets that weren't even in range of my survey ship.
+4 to sensor range: All of a sudden, your colony ships can go out and find their own planets to drop the colonists on.
+??? to research/economy: I can feel the effect overall, but it's not as startlingly obvious as the previous two.
+1 to speed: I haven't actually tried this, but that should let you build a much cheaper colony ship (130BC rather than 155BC that is equal to or superior to the standard starting colony ship design in every way.
+?? to range: Another interesting idea that I haven't played with much.
Techs (all the starting techs are cheap to research, and the ones that aren't take more points than you have to spend, so I dont think that any choice is going to make a big difference).
Hyperdrive/Hyperdrive Plus/Ion Drive: With this combination, you can start creating colony ships that are as fast, have more range, and are cheaper than your starting colony ship design.
Ship design isn't hard once you get used to it, I usually won't pick up more than one level of miniturization before pursuing weapons/defense techs. Heck, even without ship design, you could get lost going down tech branches that you later realized aren't going to be very valuable.
