"[2] At a young age, Slutsky and her family emigrated to New York City, settling in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, where she learned to speak English.

In 2004 Vieux paid recent graduates of Columbia School of Journalism $2000 each to move to San Francisco to work as reporters, among them Irina Slutsky.

[4] Although Slutsky represented Red Herring as a featured speaker at the 2005 South by Southwest conference,[5][6] she did not enjoy her time with the magazine; in her words, "it totally sucked".

[11][12] In July 2006, Slutsky and Codel signed with PodTech (a podcasting company), to work under blogging celebrity Robert Scoble,[13] who had been hired-away from Microsoft the month before.

[15] While with PodTech, Slutsky and Codel continued to produce weekly episodes similar to their independent work, only with an increased budget.

[20] Slutsky and Codel worked on yet another series called LunchMeet, interviewing Bay Area internet companies during lunchtime.

PodTech founder John Furrier explained that he had been unable to monetize GETV as he had hoped, and that most of the company's revenue was coming from contracted work for corporations, rather than their original IP.