Julie Clark, founder of The Baby Einstein Company and The Safe Side.

Money was never the motivating factor for Clark. A teacher, she founded her first company, Baby Einstein, to provide educational videos for her own babies–something that was lacking in the marketplace when her children were young.

The Baby Einstein Company was founded in 1997 by Julie Aigner-Clark at her home in suburban Denver, Colorado. Aigner-Clark and her husband, Bill Clark, invested $18,000 of their savings to produce the initial product, a VHS/DVD video called Baby Einstein, later sold as Language Nursery.

The original video shows a variety of toys and visuals interspersed with music, stories, numbers, and words of many languages. This first video was popular with some parents, and Aigner-Clark eventually convinced a national retailer to test-market the video in six of its stores. Eventually, the video was marketed across the United States. Other videos followed, some featuring the Clarks’ two daughters, Aspen and Sierra.

Clark grew Baby Einstein into a cultural phenomenon and sold it to The Walt Disney Company for $50 million, using some of the proceeds to launch her newest venture, The Safe Side–a company that produces products to help keep kids safe from strangers and child predators. “I didn’t start Baby Einstein or The Safe Side because I felt like I was going to make a million dollars,” said Clark. “I really started them because they were something that I loved and wanted to do.”