Mike Gaston is founder and CEO of Cut.com, the social-video company responsible for such viral hits as "100 Years of Beauty" and "Grandmas Smoking Weed for the First Time"--among countless others. 

In this first installment of a two-part interview with [itvt] Editor-in-Chief, Tracy Swedlow, Gaston explains why Cut.com focuses exclusively on social video, how the company views the various platforms on which it distributes its work, how it funds and monetizes its content, and how the ultimate goal of that content is to promote empathy.