Also not sure I agree with the rationale they provide for remote not working for their needs. As a small team, things move very quickly and decisions are made

Also not sure I agree with the rationale they provide for remote not working for their needs. As a small team, things move very quickly and decisions are made or reversed as new information helps guide us. This makes it really hard to keep up with company progress for anyone who isn’t in the office participating in all of the conversations that are going on. As a result, we put a high premium on physical colocation, even though this limits the geography that we can recruit from. I think this is a common misconception and tools like Slack (or previously IRC) and smart scheduling of skype conferences can go a long way to helping. It's worked great for our team. Our size varies, but up to 14 people collaborating from around the country and world. Remember, working remotely reduces environmental impact, gives your team more family time because you eliminate the commute, diversity has also been mentioned, larger hiring pool, multiple languages is often a nice side-effect and it gives you multiple time zones which is great for support teams.