The death of direct-to-consumer has been declared many times. Over the past few years, it’s become a common refrain among consumer brands, but a new generation of e-commerce startups has come to market with a remedy: bootstrapping.

When it comes to securing capital, founders, who have launched e-commerce startups within the past six years, are most likely to self-fund. That’s according to a new report from Mercury, a San Francisco-based financial technology company that provides banking services to more than 200,000 startups. In May, the fintech surveyed 1,500 entrepreneurs and executives in the U.S. that are running companies under six years old and asked about their top four funding sources. Two-thirds of e-commerce founders said self-funding, followed by 51 percent, who cited business loans. Only 21 percent of respondents said venture capital. READ MORE