Shane is from Ireland and Pablo is from Uruguay.
Second, I'm a big believer in putting everyone in one office, because I think that face-to-face communication is crucial. But the people who set up Stack Overflow are scattered geographically: I'm in New York; Jeff is in California; and he manages programmers who live in Oregon, Arkansas, and North Carolina.
[0] http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081101/how-hard-could-it-be-th...
I always thought that was a deal breaker and the very reason that people head to the bay area (or any Startup city).
I would be pretty easy to have an existing relationship move across the country/world and then still make it work, but I think it would be quite difficult to be able to find a stranger and build a strong working relationship.
I'm pretty sure that 37 signals started that way.