As a founder it’s a bit of a mixed bag: On one hand, I think everyone being in the same office pushes people to work harder and fosters a team-like environment which is positive.

But, on the other hand, being a remote company enables you to access a much larger pool of talent…which is: game-changing.

I kind of think that in most companies it looks something like:

by being remote, you can get 40-50% better talent, but be 15-25% less productive and 50-70% less tight-knit

Further, I think you should prioritize each metric in the following manner:

1. quality of talent > 2. productivity > 3. tight-knit

Thus, the tradeoff for going remote seems very much worth it. UNLESS, you can recruit the best talent and also get them all in the same place → if we’re being honest this usually means you either have a ton of $$ or having a genuinely excellent network that just all happens to live in the same place.

Presuming you aren’t in the unlikely position of having the latter, I think the former is more interesting to consider:

My conclusion is for startups where cash is super tight (say in broad strokes Pre-Series C) running a remote company is optimal, but when cash is in relative abundance (~Series C+), you should probably look to recruit the best AND make the additional investment to have the whole team work in-person.