I've met Alan a few times - he told me he was in college when he started it, and the original imgur was run off of a server in his dorm room, and he later moved to a CDN run by somebody else he met on reddit. He's a cool guy, really humble on the rumble.
I think nonchalance is arguing more to the point that this was not a "lottery winner." It was a good idea from the start, because it filled a need people actually knew about, instead of filling a need that people didn't know they had yet.
It was a need that people had, but there was no chance of making a profit without the good will of Reddit users trying to help them get ad views and bury submissions from other image dumps.
The founder also made a thread claiming it was a "gift" to Reddit while also saying the same thing to Digg.
Ahh poor reading on my behalf. Valid point, although many people build side projects that fulfill a valid need that never get adapted. You usually don't have the luxury of a marketing budget or the time to promote your idea effectively when it's just your side project. Then again that's the beauty of Reddit - 1 front page post = 10's of thousands of hits.
