This is not exactly bad advice, but it's not a good solution either.

Techies live in a bubble. Let's be frank - most people don't have a clue what IE is, let alone Firefox. Using early adopters as a gateway to a larger market only makes sense if those early adopters are a subset of such a market.

What if you're selling to say: law offices? Doctors? Accountants? HR Directors? None of these markets fit the geek->masses model. You'll fail miserably if you don't target these niches where they already live.

This worked for us (Dropbox) too. Google's another example of this progression, though they also partnered with companies that already had big mainstream audiences.

Also, make it easy for existing users to invite new ones. Better still, design your product to be viral/users bring in other users as a natural consequence of using the product (e.g. PayPal, etc.) This sounds obvious but often isn't done well.

This is great advice. To share a data point, I first became aware of Weebly because of a mention on HN. Some months later my wife, wanted to create a website for her business, and asked me for a recommendation. As you can guess, she is a happy Weebly user now.