Sevetri Wilson built her first company at 22 with no investors, no loans, and no savings to burn, and grew it into a seven-figure firm. Then she built a second one, a New Orleans tech company called Resilia, and closed a $35 million funding round that Forbes said made her one of the top-funded Black women founders in tech, as a solo founder. The foundation under both companies was poured near Baton Rouge, in a household run by a single mother.
Plain disclosure first: we could not verify that Wilson is a solo mom herself, so we do not claim it. She is on this shelf because a single mother raised her, and because what that household produced is a blueprint any solo mom can read. The mother’s work is where the story starts.
Before
Wilson grew up near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, one of four kids raised by a single mother who worked as an assistant manager at Kmart (Forbes, October 2022). She knew early that college would only happen if she went and got it, so she chased outside money and won a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation scholarship that paid her full ride to Louisiana State University. A retreat with that foundation introduced her to philanthropy as a field, and she noticed something most students would have walked past: nonprofits needed operational help, and somebody could get paid to provide it.
The turn
In 2009, at 22, Wilson founded Solid Ground Innovations, a communications and management firm serving nonprofits, with zero startup capital. No seed round, no rich uncle, no credit line. Revenue from client one paid for client two. She ran it that way for years and grew it into a seven-figure company, then wrote the method down in her first book, Solid Ground: How I Built a 7-Figure Company with Zero Capital (Black Enterprise).
The second company came from a pattern she kept seeing at the first one. Nonprofits kept paying consultants for the same repeatable work: formation paperwork, compliance, board management, reporting to funders. Software could carry that load. So she founded Resilia in New Orleans to productize what her consulting firm had been doing by hand (Forbes).
The build
She built the tech company the same way she built the first one, one proof point at a time:
- 2009: founds Solid Ground Innovations at 22 with zero capital and grows it to seven figures (Black Enterprise).
- Resilia’s early rounds: raises roughly $400,000 in pre-seed money, mostly from within Louisiana, and becomes the first Black woman in New Orleans to raise more than $1 million in venture capital (Forbes; Black Enterprise).
- October 2022: closes a $35 million Series B, bringing Resilia’s total funding to nearly $50 million, with investors including SoftBank’s Opportunity Fund and Goldman Sachs Asset Management (Forbes, October 2022).
- Along the way: publishes a second book, Resilient, and keeps Resilia headquartered in New Orleans rather than relocating to a coastal tech hub (sevetriwilson.com).
She also teaches the method as she goes. Her advice to new founders is unromantic on purpose: keep your paperwork clean, treat documentation as non-negotiable, and expect the lean years, because, as she puts it, “the idea of the broke entrepreneur is real” (Black Enterprise). It is the least glamorous startup advice in circulation, and it is exactly how a company survives with no cushion under it.
She did all of it as a solo founder, without a technical co-founder, from a state most venture investors overlook. When Forbes asked about the odds stacked against that profile, she turned the question around.
“Solo founders do go on to be grossly successful, and you can look at that across the board. But for some reason, a Black woman solo founder can’t be successful? Make it make sense to me.”
Sevetri Wilson, Forbes, October 2022
Solo moms will recognize the shape of that sentence. It is the voice of someone who has been told the setup is impossible while standing inside the results. Wilson learned the posture at home: a household on one Kmart salary produced four kids and, eventually, two companies. Impossible setups get managed every day by people nobody is watching.
What you can take from this
- Zero capital forces a real business. Solid Ground had to earn money from day one, so it did. If you start a service business this month, your first client’s payment is your funding round. The Business toolkit walks you from skill to first client without money down.
- Applications are income. Wilson’s college was paid for because she treated scholarship applications like a job. The same discipline applies to grants, benefits, and programs you may qualify for right now. Our Money toolkit shows you where to start looking.
- Build where you stand. She raised her first rounds inside Louisiana and kept her company in New Orleans. You do not need to be somewhere impressive to start something real. The proof is your zip code plus a plan, and more proof lives on our Stories of Success page.
More stories, more tools
Sevetri Wilson’s story, and her mother’s, is one of a growing shelf. Read the rest on our Stories of Success page, and join the weekly SoloMom email from the homepage to get each new story in your inbox with the tools to use it.
Verification note: the raised-by-a-single-mother framing, company facts, and the quote above were checked against the linked sources in July 2026. Wilson’s own parental status is unverified, and this story makes no claim about it. Quotes are reproduced verbatim.
