I thought I read in the FAQ thread a lot less than 120, something like 12.

I think YC would throw 1 - 1.5 M at an experiment.

For ref they do 10x this on YC startups every 6 months.

It was originally supposed to be 20 according to Sam A., but they're supposedly going to let a few more in because they had over 6,500 applicants.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10124308:

  Number of companies we offered to fund yesterday for the first YC Fellowship: 32

That's a pretty steep cut-off from the number of interviews (~120).

300 was a cut off, so I'm guessing they sent 50 - 150 interview requests.

I got the worst category of rejection letter ( no re-encouragement to apply in W15, no 300 ).

I think they'll take more than 20.