We're doing this at XWiki SAS (we have an office in Romania while most of our sales are in Western Europe and North America) and it works quite well for us so far.
Offshoring does indeed introduce some managerial challenges, but nothing that cannot be overcome. The key thing is indeed to have some early team members who come from the place where you're offshoring. In our case, the employee who started our Romanian office first started working on XWiki software in 2005, way before we considered opening an office in Iasi.
His continuous involvement in hiring the best talent has been a key part of our overall success as a team. Global company get-togethers (both in Paris and in Iasi) were also great :-)
Outsourcing vs Offshoring
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/r684vBa7Izw/outsourcing-vs-offshoring.html
(via Instapaper)