title: Is using a geographically distributed development team a better approach for running a software startup?
body: <p>It's commonly agreed that successful software development is as much about teamwork and communication as it is about individual programming expertise. Given this, one might assume that by operating a geographically distributed team you are at an immediate disadvantage to a tight-knit team all working locally.</p>
  
  <p>When my startup company was founded, we couldn't afford shared office space and I was actually located in a different city to the rest of the team, so we all had to work remotely and use tools such as Basecamp, Skype and Trac to communicate. One the whole, this was <em>really</em> successful - we got a huge amount of quality work done in a short space of time and launched a successful product.  Working remotely gave our developers the time and space they needed to focus on the job and be <em>productive</em> without having interruptions or enduring office politics.  To me, this is a huge advantage.</p>
  
  <p>Given my experience, as well as the success of software companies with distributed teams such as <a href="http://37signals.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">37signals</a> and StackOverflow (and I'm sure many more), I'm increasingly of the opinion that the advantages of running a distributed team outweighs those of running a centralised team, especially for start-up companies. </p>
  
  <p>Would you agree?  </p>