Please meet our first client at The Future Well.

We started The Future Well in early February. Since then, we’ve had many discussions with potential clients. Three weeks ago, we started working with the Freelancers Union. Sara Horowitz started the Freelancers Union because the majority of freelancers cannot obtain affordable health insurance and other traditionally employer-based benefits. She wanted to provide a solution for those people who represent about 31 percent of the labor pool: independent contractors, temporary workers, and anyone self-employed, as well as day laborers, part-timers, and those on-call.And a 21st century workforce requires a different kind of safety net, with benefits that are more flexible, portable, personal.

Sara realized that a 21st Century union wouldn’t be founded on the factory floor, but it would be an enabling, online “platform for an independent workforce.”

In January of 2009, Sara also launched their own insurance company, The Freelancers Insurance Company, providing members with health insurance options. We saw a huge opportunity to work with such a unique, forward-thinking group of passionate individuals. We’re working with them to create high-quality, cost-effective, novel ways of delivering and paying for healthcare for freelancers. That’s quite a task. Hence, we’ve been busy meeting with doctors and other healthcare professionals here in NYC, who are also freelancers, to design and build the first steps.

We’re ecstatic. These are exactly the kinds of problems for which we at The Future Well like to design solutions.