I think hindsight will reveal that the things that make a "distributed company" successful are really the same things that make a "localized company" successful. I think it's just that having all employees on-site probably makes it easier for companies to "fake it" and stumble into success through sheer grit and determination. Probably a lot of times even when they have less-than-adequate (but highly motivated) human resources.
When everyone is on site, there's enough implicit communication going on that you can get away with not documenting things in writing for a lot longer than in a remote team.
