But this discussion is not about that - it is about whether the very first team in a startup should be remote-only. That is: no office, no co-location, and first people work on the core product in a fully distributed/remote manner. Or, if a team with comparable people would achieve more if they worked in-person 50%+ of the time, with option to work remotely/from home when they chose. This are two critical points: 1) first 10 employees, not employees after #100 and 2) "in-person first" with option for some remote, or "remote-only" with no option for in-person (beyond occasional sprints). Phrased differently, the OP is deciding whether in a small startup the founder and the core team should work in-person, or should rely on email/chat.
> If done right I think remote drives a lot more DOING and a lot less MEETING.
That's an argument against useless meetings, not for remote work. This discussion is bound by the context of a brand new startup (guessing 1-5 people?). A new initiative of that scale is more likely to have too few meetings/talks/reviews than too many, as might be the case for 150+ people company.
> the results from a 2 year Standford study...
The key qualifiers from the study: the company existed, and was successful already due to working primarily in-person. Management decided to allow employees to work remotely, after they spent first 6 months together. People start work in-person, build up knowledge and group mechanics, then can self-select to work remotely. At the end of the experiment, half of those remote workers changed their mind and wanted to come back to the office because they felt isolated. The situation would be only be worse if these people were remote-first (i.e. never had 6 months in-person collab) and were remote-only (i.e. no strategy to combat isolation). The study aligns with my position: start in-person, experiment with remote when in-person becomes a troublesome (you are so successful you are running out of office space, or you're in so many countries you can't have offices everywhere, or you hired every talent in your city etc).
> remote puts roadblocks around informal communication that requires an organization to communicate well or fail
Agreed. Remote makes communication harder for everyone, adds layers of complexity, and generates demand on the time of founders/managers. A new startup has low chances of success, and unlimited list of tasks that are hard - there is no upside to signing up for optional complexity and obstacles.
> I think remote has advantages in getting a wider range of opinions from very different team members.
This advantage is granted by working in a diverse team, with engaged people, following the same vision, with a sense of emotional support. Being remote-only is unrelated at best, and more often a strike against most of those points due to how difficult it is to nurture relationships (personal or professional) over text.