Motley Fool Holdings Inc. this week announced it raised $25 million in venture financing. Good for The Fool.

But pulling back the curtain, there’s more than just a simple round of financing here. The deal points to creative ways in which venture firms are finding liquidity other than the standard acquisitions, IPOs and secondary sales.

The funding comes from mezzanine investor BIA Digital Partners and growth investor Patriot Capital, new shareholders in the online investing site. Motley Fool’s early investors–venture firms Maveron and Mayfield Fund, which invested during the dot-com bubble–and secondary firm Saints Capital, which bought shares in 2005, did not reinvest. Instead, they will eventually be bought out.

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I like to think of myself as an aficionado of business disruption. After all, as a venture capitalist it is imperative to understand ways in which a smaller private company can gain the upper hand on a large incumbent. One of the most successful ways to do this is to change the rules of the game in such a way that the incumbent would need to abandon or destroy its core business in order to lay chase to your strategy.

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When confronted with an abuse of power, an injustice or a scam I’ve developed a really effective technique: I blog, tweet and whine about it passionately for as long as possible. Basically, I do this until people get sick of me (some of you reading this have at various times told me this–I’m sorry!). I’ve learned over the years that this process is wildly effective in the long-term and has the added bonus of being great therapy.

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When venture capitalists scale back investing activities it can be very swift and leave many companies that are in the process of fund raising hung out to dry. Just ask anybody who was trying to close funding the fateful week of September 11, 2001 or even March 2000. I would argue that the shut-down of September 2008 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw.

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Many are speculating that the year two thousand and nine represents a fundamental turning point for the venture capital industry. Some are arguing that the industry is in dire straits after years of poor performance. Others have argued that the math simply does not work for the industry’s current size.

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As eBay Inc. (EBAY) looks to offload Skype, the executives who sold the Internet telecom firm to eBay have formed the hub of a European network of investors and executives that they hope will rival and even exceed the one in Silicon Valley.

The sale of Skype to eBay for an estimated $3.3 billion in 2005 became renowned as one of Europe’s great venture-capital successes, with more than half the sale price going to employees, according to estimates based on filings for the Securities and Exchange Commission and in Luxembourg. While those kinds of gains have been seen in Silicon Valley, they were practically unheard of in Europe, making Skype alumni stars among European tech entrepreneurs and giving them a cachet in the U.S. that few Europeans could match.

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International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is on a mission to expand its partnerships in Brazil in response to the country’s growing information-technology market.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based computer giant is announcing today the formation of its Sao Paulo IBM Innovation Center, part of a network of 43 such centers that will provide training, consulting services and assistance to bring new technologies to market.

The company will also be making a “more concentrated effort to engage with the venture community in Brazil,” said Claudia Fan Munce, the managing director of IBM’s venture capital group, which invests in venture capital funds but not directly in start-up companies.

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David Hornik–a partner at August Capital Management LLC, which boasts raising the year’s biggest venture capital fund with its $650 million balanced-stage fund–weighs in on the challenges facing the VC industry, including what Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson has called “The Venture Capital Math Problem.”

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The big news out this week in the venture capital market is the launch of Andreessen Horowitz, a new $300 million venture capital fund co-founded by Marc Andreeseen, a tech visionary who founded Netscape Communications, the startup that triggered the Internet tsunami. Raising $300 million for a first time fund is an incredible achievement in today’s depressed capital-starved economy. How did Andreessen and his long-time business partner and co-investor Ben Horowitz pull it off?

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Retailers aren’t likely to resume spending on their IT infrastructure again until at least 2010, according to NCR (NCR) Chairman and CEO William Nuti.

In an interview Friday afternoon with Tech Trader Daily, Nuti said that demand for the company’s point-of-sale retail terminals remains “slow around the world.” He says the sector will want to see signs of a pick-up in consumer discretionary spending in the upcoming back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons before showing a renewed willingness to invest. One key, he says, could be the direction of fuel price, which as Nuti notes has a strong correlation with consumer discretionary spending.

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Being able to secure venture capital financing in the recession is something of an achievement. But getting that money now appears to be coming at a cost.

According to a new survey from law firm Fenwick & West, the terms of venture financing in the first quarter of 2009 were heavily dominated by “down” rounds–industry jargon for saying that companies are getting much lower valuations than they previously commanded. Down rounds exceeded “up” rounds by 46 to 25 percent, with 29 percent flat, notes the survey. That’s the first time since the fourth quarter of 2003 that down rounds have outweighed up rounds.

That’s bad news for existing venture investors in a startup, whose piece of the company is devalued. It’s also bad news for startups, which are worth less than they once thought.

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After a decade of experimentation, companies have yet to find a reliable way to burnish their brands online. Research shows barely more than one in 1,000 people click on banner ads. What’s more, they rarely hang around long enough to absorb a brand message.

Former Madison Avenue hotshot Matt Freeman aims to change all that. Freeman’s company, Betawave, is developing ways to boost visitor “engagement” and plans to charge advertisers not just by each click or view but also by people’s attentiveness. The concept is untested, but it has generated excitement. Several venture capital shops in December put $22.5 million into Betawave. “Matt’s ahead of the curve,” says Sean Finnegan, chief digital officer at Starcom MediaVest, which buys ads for Coca-Cola (KO), Procter & Gamble (PG), Nintendo, and others.

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The competitive edge of the United States economy has eroded sharply over the last decade, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group.

The report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that the United States ranked sixth among 40 countries and regions, based on 16 indicators of innovation and competitiveness. They included venture capital investment, scientific researchers, spending on research and educational achievement.

But the American economy placed last in terms of progress made over the last decade. “The trend is very troubling,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the foundation.

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It’s easy to write about what the government or other people should do with our/their money. It’s harder to come up with a course of action that I can undertake on my own that possibly, somehow could make a difference. My first inclination is always to try to look “for the next big thing.” But the next big thing is just that–next. It’s not now. It’s Venture Capital. It’s not self-funding, renewal capital.

Rather than trying to be a Venture Capitalist, I was looking for an idea that hopefully could inspire people to create businesses that could quickly become self-funding. Businesses that just needed a jump-start to get the ball rolling and create jobs. I’m a big believer that entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. I just needed a way to help.

So here it is. Some people will love it, some will hate it. It is what it is.

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The numbers are startling; one technology IPO last quarter, only six in 2008. Is innovation dead? Did Google/Microsoft/Cisco consume all the promising start-ups? Did Sarbanes-Oxley render IPOs too hard and costly? Yes, if you believe columnists, conferences and collective wisdom.

They’re wrong. IPOs aren’t popular because they are perilous. Choosing extra risk now is like stocking up on peanut butter energy bars during a salmonella outbreak. The downside is ugly. New “unseasoned” issues are like new car models, rife with unknown quirks. We know their lineage and plans, but the future is mostly hope and speculation. Hindsight shows that newly public companies are prone to err when first under the marketplace spotlight.

The question isn’t “why aren’t investors buying IPOs now?” but rather “why do investors ever buy IPOs?” The answer is that institutional investors, the principal IPO buyers, exist to take calculated risks. If convinced potential reward overcompensates for added risk, fund managers will belly up to the IPO bar and order a double. Conversely, when offered safer, appealing choices, investors will skip the umbrella drinks and opt for the single malts. These days, risk reminds us of Jagermeister shots: something that used to be fun.

However, unless entrepreneurs now dream of Hondas–not Ferraris–and unless these “damn the torpedoes” folks checked their aspirations in the umbrella stand, the IPO market will be back.

The process of going public is tougher than it used to be but it’s still an entrepreneur’s crowning achievement. Need proof? Name four famous tech company founders. How about Sergey, Larry, Steve and Bill? Now name four tech legends who sold out to Cisco (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT) or IBM (IBM). OK, name one.

IPOs are proof that ideas and hard work create recognizable value. No other exit affords founders both the glory and the independence. More tangible reasons to go include the start-up promise to employees; “Work long hours for low pay today, and tomorrow you too can afford a Tesla.” There’s no guarantee of success, but if it’s realized, there is an agreement that it will be shared by all. An IPO is the deliverable on that deal.

Secondly, acquisitive growth companies often prefer shopping with stock over cash, but agreeing on private-stock value is difficult. Public equity is a better currency because of its undeniable, third-party valuation. Finally, Silicon Valley’s history proves that yesterdays’ IPOs fund seed capital for tomorrow’s innovators.

A healthy economy needs a robust IPO market, begging the question: With so few of late, are we up the creek? To the contrary, five pointers suggest when we emerge from the current mess; our IPO market may be healthier than it has been in a decade.

1. Sarbanes Oxley is good for IPOs. According to Morgan Stanley Research, over a 20-year period, north of 60 percent of technology IPOs trade below their offer price. High on the list of reasons why newly public companies flounder is their failure to heed the wisdom of Paul Masson; they sell before their time.

The distractions are enormous and expensive. It’s genuinely difficult to lay the rails while driving a bullet train. Natural business challenges are compounded by the Sarbanes Oxley albatross. Fine-point accountability requirements force order on the chaos inherent in rapidly growing companies, but unquestionably slow the journey to market.

At an average small company cost of $3.0m, SOX implementation takes a major bite out of profits. However, while this expense initially reduces calculable company valuable for those using current earnings to set the IPO price, over time, accountability reduces corporate risk and therefore should increase returns. In fact, if a company can’t afford the expense and hasn’t endured the hardship of thoroughly documenting its systems, is it really ready for the teachers’ retirement fund, corporate pension plan or other public investors? It was easier to go public before SOX but, for investors or issuers, was it better?

2. The demise of investment banks is good for IPOs. Today, we lambast investment banks because they earned it. Formerly sure-footed firms ran full speed into a bog they didn’t understand. Those whom Tom Wolfe once christened “Masters of the Universe” and “BSDs” have morphed into LSWs (little shriveled walnuts).

How does this help the IPO market? In the heyday, technology IPOs were shepherded by boutique investment banks focused on, and economically aligned with emerging growth companies. Those banks didn’t invent, sell or swap CDOs or SIVs. Rather, in the 1990s, following the wisdom of the day, they sold out to diversified, theoretically better-capitalized, larger banks. Those acquiring banks emulated Audrey, the man-eating plant from “Little Shop of Horrors,” demanding ever larger revenues to sustain their mass, leaving new issuers who generate small fees with little IPOs, an acronym of their own; SOL.

Now, with large investment banks hanging with the pterodactyls, there’s an opportunity for boutiques to rise again, a turn that could be very good for the IPO market.

3. The implosion of hedge funds is good for IPOs. Hedge funds vary in size and style but until recently, the market movers who mattered were the fast-money behemoths. These players often care about IPOs only on day one. In a whiplash market, even longer term investors had little opportunity to amass measurable holdings of new issues. With the fast money players sidelined, patient “investment” (versus speculative) funds may again have time to develop confidence in management, a prerequisite for accumulating big positions in newly public stocks.

4. The new administration is good for IPOs: “It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things…who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.”

Public recognition of the entrepreneurial spirit, and its critical role in our economy, by President Obama in his Inaugural Address. Enough said.

5. Constrained venture capital is good for IPOs. Comfortable start-ups, with logo-emblazoned, fleece-clad employees sometimes grow flabby. Conversely, start-ups scraping by to pay bills must focus on building and profitably selling products. While some genuinely need millions for development, others require only cheap computers and smart people willing to work like politicians during primary season. Eventually, outside investment fuels expansion, but examples from Apple (AAPL) to Intuit (INTU) to Google (GOOG) prove that, as the lottery once advertised, all it takes (at first) is a dollar (or a credit card) and a dream. Less venture money sloshing around today will likely mean fewer but stronger start-ups tomorrow.

It isn’t broken, please don’t “fix” it. Today’s IPO market is not healthy, but it is rational. Government’s role should be to insure that observant, active, on-the-ball regulators have the tools and backing to seek out and slam down financial cheats, thereby restoring confidence in the markets. If government can find a way to restrict extortionist lawsuits filed whenever a stock drops, that would help too. Otherwise, well-meaning administrators should stand clear.

When the markets settle and when the blue plate specials on blue chip securities abate, when the investment merits of an IPO are self-evident, a better and stronger market will be ready.