...and be in the right country. And have money or a support network that helps you while chasing the unicorn. Or if you get sick.

And how many times can you be wrong before you are 35 with no savings, no career, no prospects, and no safety blanket?

In startups you get to be wrong only once.

What is that supposed to mean? Fail fast and move on is one of the mantras of the industry and as far as I can tell from reading HN most startup founders and employees all have numerous startups under their belt unless they accidently unicorned their very first one.

It means, as you succinctly captured, that the startup is dead. The founders may well move on, but the original venture is toast. Point being: generally a startup doesn't have sufficient resource to recover from any serious missteps, particularly in the earlier parts of the game. All you can do is close the doors and move on to the next thing. Or get a job. The people survive (though frequently not without taking some damage, emotional, personal, financial or other) but the venture itself... no.

source: Me. ~Veteran~ Survivor of 3 failed startups ;)

Dépends who you are and even more who you parents are. Or what type of jobs you were doing before.

As opposed to a successful exit. No matter the above, it’s still a successful exit.