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The firm raised a $50 million Series B, led by with participation from Inovia and Emergence Capital 1, to build out its international presence and hire more data scientists, according to firm founders and .

Next, through limited partners and , Clearbanc has created its third fund, a $250 million fund to invest in new verticals like SaaS.

The duo, which has spoken on how equity investments have stripped ownership from founders, are quick to point out this news isn’t hypocrisy at play. For them, a company with a 10 year horizon, is “exactly what equity [investing] should be used for,” said Romanow. They’re using the capital raised through its equity sale (the Series B) to help with sales, marketing, and experimentation in new geographies, said D’Souza. 

None of the Series B will be used directly toward investing in future companies. “It would be very counter intuitive to use equity dollars to fund other entrepreneurs,” said D’Souza.

So why did it make sense for Clearbanc to sell shares to raise capital, when it trumpets the opposite solution – non-equity financing – for others? It’s because the firm isn’t using the cash the way most founders do, it claims.

Clearbanc said founders make a mistake and sell shares in their company just to turn around and spend 40 percent of those venture capital dollars on Facebook and Google campaigns. In contrast, Clearbanc thinks that equity fundraising is effective when its being used to grow other areas of the business. 

In some ways, Clearbanc raising a Series B is giving in order to get back. The idea here is that the stronger, and more widespread the Clearbanc team is, the more equity-free investments we’ll see. This year so far, the firm has invested in 900 companies. (Crunchbase News asked for a list of investments from the company; it declined to disclose all.)

Regarding the new $250 million fund, the duo was inspired to create this third investment vehicle because they kept meeting founders who weren’t e-commerce focused, but wanted equity-free investment. 

So, Clearbanc started looking at other indicators of a healthy business that are tied to revenue. Like shipping volume, or sales. The company is still figuring out what exact focus the new fund will have, but said that while it previously cut checks between $10,000 and $10 million, it’ll now invest in larger companies, with checks greater than $10 million.

As Clearbanc inches toward 1,000 investments, D’Souza said Clearbanc’s data strategy is helping tear down bias in investment decisions, a rampant problem within venture capital. 

“You get VCs who are looking for pattern recognition for the 22-year-old Stanford dropout, wearing a hoodie that came from the right family, and you’re immediately at a disadvantage,” he said.

And for proof that Clearbanc’s data-driven approach avoids that: to date the firm has funded eight times more female founders than the venture capital industry average.

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Sound good to you? The Seattle-based coffee empire is hoping that’s the case.

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just poured into a food startup-focused fund, Valor Siren Ventures Fund. The fund will be managed by , and will invest in companies innovating in food or retail, . The fund is working to raise an additional $300 million in coming months.

We haven’t seen too much Starbucks steam in the tech world, other than a few investments, and three acquisitions, including . Investing in a fund is a first for the company,.

The concept of corporations creating venture funds continues to gain momentum, as our own Jason Rowley reported back in September. His piece illustrates how active this sector really is while pointing out how many tech companies have entered into investment initiatives including , , and of course .

As Jason reported, part of this drive might be the realization by corporations that they can’t beat out startups when it comes to innovation. Thus, entering as financial partners might be next best option.

, president and CEO of Starbucks, Kevin Johnson, had a similar, tech-heavy mindset. He sounds right at home in the world of venture capital: “We believe that innovative ideas are fuel for the future, and we continue to build on this heritage inside our company across beverage, experiential retail, and our digital flywheel.”

He added that Starbucks is accelerating a so-called “innovation agenda” and that the entrepreneurs they’re helping may enter into commercial relationships with Starbucks in the future.

Last year, the company was shooed out of a neighborhood as a threat to “old-world” feel and historic charm, . At the time, Starbucks said it believed independent stores and small chains can continue to grow and thrive alongside their outlets. Fast forward a little less than a year later, and it seems that Starbucks isn’t just betting that small operations will thrive, but is pouring into them with investment.

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