Thanks gregcohn, I read this article last night and now am convinced that this isn't good practice. I was surprised that the company that went ahead with these guys actually did because they had been around for sometime.
Independently of being a bad idea from the entrepreneur's point of view, it is a very negative signal to a potential investor if you can raise your own early-stage round (per loumf's comment).
Fundraising is harder than it looks on techcrunch, though, and it's understandable that anxious and/or desperate founders would get to a point where they'd try anything that sounds good.
A better approach would be generating traction ;-).
Yep, I decided to be customer-funded (traction) instead of vc funded. I had met this guy a while back and thought if I could get some funding in it could take me to the next level faster... but, re-focusing on the customer again seems to be the better alternative :)