Here's imgur's creator's post from 4 years ago introducing the site to redditors:

My Gift to Reddit: I created an image hosting service that doesn't suck. What do you think? http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to...

Here's an AMA (ask me anything, reddit interview post) he did: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_...

Interesting quote from the AMA: "Imageshack tried to buy it 6 months after I made it". I'm sure everyone is glad he didn't sell. IIRC half of imageshack links were "bandwidth exceeded" messages