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Actually, the evidence (assuming evo assumptions) is surprisingly that the theoritical common metazoan ancestor had about the same number of genes as we do, and in fact, "many animal lineages" evolved through "a massive loss of genes" according to one paper (I'd link but the article isn't allowed here).
So there really is no support for the idea:
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It didn't start as complex, it evolved into complexity
at least genetically.
Actually, the complexity refered to in the article is visual complexity, posessing a nervous system, mouth, and anus in particular. It is general unknown how genetic complexity relates to visual complexity. A longer genome does not necessarily mean you get something that looks more complex. Even thoush Ctenophores (comb jellies) have a nervous system like higher animals, that nervous system could have evolved from a different set of genes, after the split from the main animal line. So as the paper says, there is not enough evidnce one way or another (yet).
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