[gregcohn]

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 ;-).

[chanachor]

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 :)