I've done it a few times. This works better since you get a lot of the relationships, culture and company knowledge established before you spend less time in the office and if you do it slowly you all learn and fix what needs to be put in place to make it work well.

It doesn't work in all companies, but you can often work this out in advance. A good sign is obviously if some people already work remotely, but I have found where this works best is if the company already has teams spanning multiple locations and time zones and have the management structure and communication tools developed to do that properly.