What do you do? I'm in New York, have a technically simple (not discounting the effort into building it or saying it's easy) idea, and have some contacts in the financial world that can put money into something tangible. My shortcomings are that I don't code, and NYC is full of programmers who are either poseurs and keep coming to "I want to start something" Meetups again and again but never seem to "take that first step" or people rushing to try to get a job at Google or Facebook's NYC offices. So, in conclusion, I'd take "long distance" over face-to-face with people who for whatever reason never seem to understand that "3-5 guys working together without corporate direction from the boss" thing that happens in Silicon Valley on a daily basis.

I think goals and attitudes and personality and a willingness to be flexible are much more important then being close enough to someone to smell them and see their acne.