Don't make me wrong davidw, Italy is one of the best countries on Earth to live with your family, but from the business point of view it's a nightmare. It's cute, unbelievably cute, but sometimes it's not enough to live a happy life.
R&D in Italy it's one of my dreams and remote working tools are out there to help, but in my experience it is very complicated to make it working in the long run when the company scale. You save money, but not that much. On the other hand you slow down a little bit the execution. It's just my own experience.