Office space cost is not an issue for startups. Talent is the big thing. You can get pretty cheap co-working space including a private office without committing

Office space cost is not an issue for startups. Talent is the big thing. You can get pretty cheap co-working space including a private office without committing to a long term lease (a 6 months lease is pretty common). You raise a good point. If most startups start remote these days, then next decade most tech companies will be remote. They are (at least some) are the big companies of the future. I think for startups it really depends on how they start. Sometimes it's a few student friends building a company together and in that case they start in-person and likely to stay like that. In other cases it's one person looking for a co-founder and they meet someone Online who is in a different location and the company stays remote because of that. Then it also depends how they grow. Many hire a lot of contractors in the early days and it's mostly remote folks in other countries.