You don’t have to start with a knot, you can just loop it on the needle. To make the first row, (the cast on isn’t a row, it’s just the cast on) you put the needle with the sts on it into your left hand and make a knit stitch. There are video that show how to do the knit stitch, and on the Tips page there’s one Demo of a Small Project that shows casting on, then doing a few rows.