Two Silicon Valley startups raise $1M and they each have need for a great team. Team One is on site. They spend a lot of otherwise productive time attempting to hire great engineering talent away from other equally impressive startups in the area. They pay $150k per person (let's call it $200k fully loaded) for talented, but not phenomenal people. Team Two is fully distributed. They decide to hire the best, no matter where they are, and at $150k per person everyone outside of Silicon Valley gives them a look with much less effort on their part. They save time, they save on office space in SV, and, best of all, they build a team of truly phenomenal folks who are happy to be making $150k, because it's likely $50k higher than they were making at whatever job they had before they got recruited.
Assuming you can build a better team in the Valley is only relevant if you have a reasonable expectation that you'll find similarly talented folks at the same price no matter where you are. That is simply not the case.
More on the blog: http://blog.workforpie.com/2013/06/04/the-case-for-remote-wo...