Introducing Nwayo — an AI page builder for Caribbean businesses and the diaspora
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Introducing Nwayo — an AI page builder for Caribbean businesses and the diaspora.
By DaHo · 6 min read · Launch
Most software is built somewhere else, in someone else's language, paid for with a card most of our people don't carry.
Nwayo flips that.
What Nwayo does, in one sentence
You describe your business — in Kreyòl, French, English, or Spanish, typed or spoken — and Nwayo builds you a real, working web page. Your name, your services, your prices, your hours, your photos, and a WhatsApp button your customers tap to reach you. Published at your own address in seconds. Loads instantly on any phone, on any connection. Share it in your group chats. Print the QR for your counter.
No code. No US credit card. No waiting.
Why we built it
If you run a business in the Caribbean or somewhere in the diaspora, you already know the workaround. Your storefront is an Instagram grid with prices buried in DMs. Your menu is a photo someone screenshots and shares. Your booking system is a WhatsApp conversation that closes deals but leaves you no record. It works — barely — because you make it work.
The tools that are supposed to help you assume things about you that aren't true. They assume you speak English. They assume you have a Visa card that clears in dollars. They assume your customers use email, not WhatsApp. They assume you have time to learn "content management systems." They assume, quietly, that you're not really the customer.
Nwayo makes the opposite assumption. It assumes you are exactly who you are — a caterer in Jérémie, a salon owner in Petit-Goâve, a tour guide in Cap-Haïtien, a boutique in Santo Domingo, a hometown-association organizer in Brooklyn — and it's built around what you actually do, in the language you actually think in, on the channel you actually sell on.
What "built for the Caribbean" really means
It's not a paint job. It's four decisions all the way down:
Your language, from the prompt to the page. Type "yon sit pou restoran fanmi mwen" and Nwayo doesn't translate you into English and back — it writes the page in Kreyòl, with dishes it knows, prices in the right currency, in the tone your customers expect. French, English, and Spanish work the same way. Four languages, one seed.
WhatsApp is the checkout counter. Every page ship with a WhatsApp button pre-wired to your number. Customers browse the page, then tap to open a conversation with you directly — no fake contact forms, no email inboxes to check. The page presents; WhatsApp closes. It's the way business already works here; we just gave it a storefront.
Payment methods that exist where you live. Pay for Nwayo with a card if you have one. Pay with MonCash in gourdes if you don't. The Lakay plan starts at $9. If you're in the diaspora, you can even sponsor someone back home — one subscription, two businesses, one family. That's the Diaspora plan, and it's the most "us" feature we shipped.
Real speed on real phones. A Nwayo page paints in under a second on a 3G connection because it's a real page, not a heavy app. Nothing to crash. Nothing to maintain. Publishes in seconds and stays live even if you stop paying.
Chak gwo lide kòmanse ak yon nwayo
The word nwayo means seed. Every big idea — a restaurant in Brooklyn, a tour agency in Cap-Haïtien, a boutique in Santo Domingo, a community church in Boston — starts as one. Nwayo is where you plant it, water it (we call that step Wouze), and harvest what grows (Rekòlte). Every user's path through the product follows that arc, because it's the arc every business follows.
And listen to the name once more: nwa yo. In Kreyòl, that reads: the Black many. Us.
We didn't put that meaning in a marketing line. It was already in the name. Every page built with Nwayo is a small proof that the tools we needed, we can build ourselves.
Where we are today
Nwayo is live at nwayo.app. Free to start — three apps, twenty-five builds per month, real published sites at your own address. The first 500 people to publish a page get the Pro plan free for 3 months — that's $42 on us for your business. We call that cohort the Premye Grenn. First Seeds.
The road from here has more chapters. Real payments accepted directly on your page. A store-block that turns your Instagram catalog into an actual checkout. Custom domains. On-island payments in gourdes through MonCash and Natcash. A template marketplace where Caribbean designers sell what other Caribbean businesses need. We'll walk that road publicly, on this journal, and we'll tell the truth about what works and what doesn't as we go.
Plante nwayo w la.
If you've been waiting for a tool that treats your business like it's the whole point instead of an afterthought — start with a page. Two minutes. Yours to keep.
— DaHo, founder Nwayo — Fèt an Ayiti. Pou Karayib la. Pou mond ki vini an. 🌱