The upper bound on a Nondeterministic Finite Automata's configurations number
Remember that:
We can view a nondeterministic computation as a directed acyclic graph of configurations indexed by time.

I have a guess that in your eyes:
$2^n$ for both, one directs itself and one directs others and at most every has the $\Sigma$ chance to go next state, maybe to itself, maybe the other state, so from $1$ to $n$ state, an NFA produces at most $\mid\Sigma\mid^n$ configurations.

Here are more details: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~torng/360Book/NFA/