Amazing group of people. Manjul is my wife's cousin so I have heard of a few examples of his brilliance (like the time he corrected his mom, a Math prof, during one of her lectures - he was a middle-schooler at the time).
He went on to found Tarsnap about a year after that exchange.
The whole thread is really incredible. Just a bit further down[1] you see someone criticize him and his startup (Tarsnap) for having a "phenomenal misunderstanding of what it takes to create a successful software startup."
And then Drew Houston of Dropbox chimes in to say that he's building a similar backup solution.
He went on to found Tarsnap about a year after that exchange.
Your chronology is a bit off -- I started writing code about a year before that thread. I had my first alpha testers at the time, and opened Tarsnap to the general public a few months later.
Doubtful. First, Forbes says that dhouston has a net worth of $1.2B; and even if I had been an extra cofounder, splitting the cofounder shares more ways would have brought it below $1B.
Second, I really doubt I could have stuck it out at Dropbox for the necessary time. I like to do things in ways which are technically right rather than necessarily financially right; Dropbox is a phenomenally successful business, but it's not a product which I like.
2nd point is key. From collectong comic books to running companies, there are many people who had the requisite starting potential to be a success, but attrition peels off almost all of them for so many small and often unrelated reasons.
Make the post of your own path, and play to your strengths.
Here's a nice piece NPR did on him: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4111253