Why don't you show us successful startups where people built it fully remotely without meeting each other in person? Sam is claiming that in early stage startups, one need some in-person interaction which I fully agree with.
While some of the execs have met in person now, the whole thing was bootstrapped by a handful of people before they met.
He's claiming that, but that's not all he's claiming. His claim about remote work being a big mistake for the tech industry is much broader than just early stage startups. But as far as I can tell, he has no real basis for his claim except for early stage startups; so his claim could be true for them but false for the tech industry as a whole.
There are plenty of companies working fully remote of different sizes ranging from a duo to a trio of three up to few hundred.
The claim is as absurd as startups not having mechanical keyboards or not using JIRA fail miserably to capture market.