It’s not surprising then that the actor and social media entrepreneur would harbor grand ambitions for the latest venture from his production entity Katalyst, Dream Bigger, a new show that forms the centerpiece of the company’s original YouTube channel called Thrash Lab. “The way we see it, pop culture has popped,” says Kutcher of his Katalyst team, which includes co-founder Jason Goldberg and president Anthony Batt. “Thrash Lab will redefine culture, not by chasing what is cool, but by elevating the conversation and re-setting the barometer of what defines culture today.”

Premium original content on the web is still a budding business, but Katalyst has been working for years in the converging worlds of entertainment, brands and technology and so seems a natural addition to YouTube’s original channel lineup. Kutcher himself has played in those three areas as few other actors have–continuing to act in films (playing none other than Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic Jobs ) TV (taking over from Charlie Sheen in Two And A Half Men) commercials (he’s been a long time Nikon spokesman; a more recent turn for Pop Chips has gone a little less smoothly), a tech backer and social media personality. Katalyst, founded in 2000 as a home for Kutcher’s projects for TV (Punk’d) and film (The Butterfly Effect, Killers), has, in recent years, branched out with a digital division that’s produced such past efforts as the animated web ‘toon Blah Girls and the workplace-parody series Katalyst HQ.

Kutcher and Batt spoke to Co.Create about their content ambitions for the channel and offered a behind-the-scenes look at the new series, Dream Bigger.

The seed for Katalyst’s premium video channel was planted last spring when the company partnered with Intel for the digital-media conference IdeaJam, which brought content creators together for 48 hours in Los Angeles to brainstorm ideas for, and then create, original content. “Ashton and I were like, that worked,” remembers Batt, the founder and former chief creative officer of BUZZMedia, who joined Katalyst as its president in 2011. “It took that kind of Silicon Valley energy and applied it to what you’d normally call entertainment.”

Eager to expand on the idea and provide both an outlet and potential springboard for content creators, Batt approached Google’s Robert Kyncl. The meeting proved auspicious as Google was already looking to get serious about TV on the web. When the company announced last October that it was investing in 100 new professionally produced YouTube channels, Thrash Lab was officially born. “We want digital media to become the medium of choice,” Batt says.

Like the cable companies that disrupted the broadcast networks in the ’80s, Thrash Lab’s targeting a specific audience. “The bullseye is someone who’s visually creative,” says Batt. “Our second audience is that aspirational creative who says, ‘I wanna be like those people. I’m gonna watch Thrash Lab and participate with it because it’s speaking to me.’ And then there will also be the audience who’s not necessarily creative but really appreciates creativity. It’s an audience that isn’t really well-served by any one media group, so we’re basically gonna own it.”