As a person who worked at a company that has expanded to a couple other cities, the problem is bringing the culture of the company to the satellite office and ensuring that such an office has enough of talent pool to make that investment. Having top leaders willing to move from a place like the Bay Area to smaller towns to help the transition is not always that easy.
The thing that works, in my experience, is where employees/founders have pre-existing personal ties to other areas (e.g. I'll recruit personally at MIT for my startup, and probably up in Seattle, and possibly via some connections in Cambridge, Berlin, and Montreal); it's a lot easier to bridge the cultural issues that way. Then, ideally, relocate to where the startup is based (i.e. Mountain View, Ground Zero), but allowing wfh/remote or setting up an office if there happens to be a key person or a group of people there.
Certainly it's not easy, but aren't most of these companies all about "putting in the hard work" and whatever other cliches you can come up with? "We're gonna change the world!" (as long as I don't have to change my ZIP code, or get a different cell phone provider, and as long as you uproot your entire family, move across the country and come work for my fifth startup).
I totally understand it's not an easy thing to do, but many things in life that are worth doing aren't easy.
