I'm going to be upfront about something: I have a very strong opinion on this topic.
I was a high school senior when COVID hit. I finished my last day of high school by closing my laptop and walking downstairs. A lot of people talk about this time and things we missed in a nebulous sense, but frankly, it lacked community.
That experience shaped how I think about work, and it's one of the reasons I'm building Verso in the way that I am. Strong marketing, strong community of users, and a team that all sits in the same office.
Deciding who to hire is ridiculously hard. Can't emphasize that enough (we're trying to make it a little bit easier).
But a killer team is one piece of the puzzle. Getting them to work together is equally complex. One thing will make it easier: being in office.
Learning in person is faster. It's not close. You uncover problems faster, solve problems faster, and ship solutions faster.
Harvard Business Review found that people who onboard in person grow their internal network 35% faster than remote counterparts. That's not a small number — that's the difference between someone who figures out how things actually work and someone who's still asking basic questions six months in. When your new hire can watch their teammates operate in real time, ask questions on the fly, and absorb the culture of the organization, they become contributors sooner.
And that’s just in onboarding.
Here's something that gets glossed over in the remote work conversation: only 7% of human communication happens through spoken language. The other 93% is tone, expression, body language. Video calls capture maybe half of that. 55% of communication still happens through physical presence that a camera frame just can't replicate.
We stumbled into building a super viral marketing campaign making fun of corporate calls recently (check out our socials) where you can see this illustrated.
Every Slack message, every email, every Zoom call is operating at a fraction of the bandwidth of a face-to-face conversation. Ideas move slower. Misunderstandings pile up. Trust — the thing that actually makes teams function — takes way longer to build.
A Stanford study found that teams who meet in person generate 20% more ideas than teams who meet online. There’s a reason some of the world's greatest teams (like Zoom) build in person multiple times a week.
Gallup found in 2025 that 57% of fully remote workers are actively searching or passively watching for a new job. More than half. That's not a workforce with a few wandering eyes. That's a workforce that has mentally checked out, even if they're still logging hours.
This is a massive risk for any founder, and kills progress on mission critical problems. Do you want the guys who are building the defense tech of the future browsing jobs during their workday?
In-person work helps fix this. When people work alongside mentors and teammates, they level up faster, they internalize the mission, and they actually care about what they're building — not just what they're getting paid to do.
At a startup, that difference is everything. You don't have the luxury of a six-month ramp. You need people who are bought in from day one, and nothing accelerates buy-in like sitting next to the founder when things get hard and watching them figure it out in real time.
That energy is contagious. A team full of people who are locked in and building together becomes a magnet for more talent. Once the flywheel starts, hiring only gets easier.
One more thing: thinking that heads down work is impossible in an office is a massive excuse. Focus as a team is one of the most misunderstood benefits of sitting together.
Loneliness is one of the defining crises of American life. We've gotten really good at being alone. We don't need to make that easier.
I helped (in a tiny way) scale Lucid Private Offices for almost 6 years before leaving to start Verso. It exists to bring the energy and community of an office together with the flexibility and focus of remote work. Different spaces for different tasks. A place to collaborate, and a place to retreat when the work demands it. In a world where hybrid is the norm, Lucid is a practical version of the best of both worlds without forcing a choice between the two.
Lucid believes in the power of people in community and teams. If you’re building a team, give yourself the best shot you can and be in person.
