>I force remote first (and we've been like that since the start) the horror stories in this thread all sound like horrible mismanagement from companies trying to "add it on" rather than have it be a first class policy.
At the place where I had a positive experience, there were two major factors.
1) Since so many people were remote and some teams were spread across the world, everybody knew information had to be explicitly distributed. There was no assumption that something that came up in a meeting would be later discussed at a secondary meeting, lunch, in the kitchen area, etc. The benefit of this was that people generally knew what was going on in project relevant to them. There was minimal hoarding of relevant information, which helped everybody feel like they were plugged in and not working for a very hierarchical organization.
2) Almost everybody on my team respected, trusted, and liked each other. This meant that conversations weren't forced and people always tried to help each other. Calling somebody wasn't an issue and wasn't seen as an intrusion. There were none of the games you see when you have to work with people you don't trust. From a network perspective, this was great!
I notice that you're a cofounder so I state an observation. In times of stress for a company (e.g. a reorg) please over communicate. The company where I was working went through a massive reorg. Everybody maintained their previous level of communication, which was fine from a project perspective. But from a "What is really going on" and morale perspective, leadership did very little because they never had to do it before and didn't realize the value of it. To them, they were communicating as they always did. In actuality, there was an information vacuum and a failure in leadership. In a remote environment you're always fighting the feeling of being left out. It's easier to feel isolated, lost, and that information is being hidden from you. The leadership only reinforced this and lost a lot of good people.