Ben Sigelman

Angel Investor / GM, ServiceNow Cloud Observability at independent

Reviewed Updated Aug 30, 2026

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Angel investor and GM of ServiceNow Cloud Observability (formerly co-founder and CEO of Lightstep, acquired by ServiceNow in 2021). Writes small seed checks concentrated in observability, distributed tracing, and AI infrastructure — categories directly adjacent to his co-creation of OpenTracing and OpenTelemetry. Verified positions include Odigos, Laminar, WarpStream, Coval, and Continua.

Location San Francisco Bay Area
Check Size Small angel checks
Last Verified Investment Laminar (Seed) — Mar 17, 2026
Social @el_bhs LinkedIn
Stage Focus
seed
Sector Focus
developer-tools observability enterprise-infrastructure ai-infrastructure

Background

Ben Sigelman is an angel investor and General Manager of ServiceNow Cloud Observability, the business unit created when ServiceNow acquired his previous company, Lightstep, in 2021 12.

Sigelman began his career at Google, where he co-created Dapper (Google’s internal distributed tracing system) and worked on Monarch (Google’s planet-scale metrics system) 13. In 2015 he co-founded Lightstep with Ben Cronin and Daniel Spoonhower, building the company into a distributed-tracing and observability platform for microservices architectures 34. Lightstep raised funding from Redpoint, Sequoia, Altimeter, and Harrison Metal before being acquired by ServiceNow on June 15, 2021 for undisclosed terms 45.

Sigelman is also the co-creator of two widely adopted CNCF open-source observability standards: OpenTracing and its successor OpenTelemetry (OTel) 136. He is co-author of the O’Reilly book Distributed Tracing in Practice 7. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University (1999–2003) 8.

Following the ServiceNow acquisition, Sigelman took the role of General Manager of ServiceNow Cloud Observability and continues to run the observability business inside ServiceNow 12. He describes his angel activity as a personal side-line — he has publicly called himself “a tiny angel” in Coval, a voice-AI company 8.

Stated Thesis

Self-reported. Sigelman does not publish a formal investment thesis. Public writing, interview appearances, and his angel portfolio are consistent with a narrow, personal-network-driven focus:

  • Observability, distributed tracing, and OpenTelemetry-adjacent infrastructure — reflecting Sigelman’s decade-plus of technical work in the space 369
  • Developer tools and enterprise infrastructure for AI-era workloads — including agent frameworks and voice AI 810
  • Small check sizes — Sigelman has described his angel role in Coval as “a tiny angel” 8

He does not describe himself as a professional investor. His day job is running an observability P&L at ServiceNow.

Inferred Thesis

Sigelman’s angel portfolio, per Tracxn’s tracking, comprises approximately 6–10 investments clustered in a narrow band around observability, developer tools, and AI infrastructure 1011. This is too small a sample for percentage breakdowns; the pattern is qualitative:

Sector concentration: Every publicly documented Sigelman angel check maps to either (a) observability/instrumentation directly overlapping his Lightstep/OpenTelemetry expertise (Odigos, Laminar), (b) messaging/data infrastructure adjacent to observability workloads (WarpStream), or (c) AI infrastructure with an operations/agent tooling angle (Coval, Continua) 91011.

Geographic focus: United States (Bay Area/Boston) and Israel — the two geographies where his professional network is deepest and where the observability/dev-tools founder pool is concentrated 10.

Stage focus: Seed. All documented checks are at seed stage; no verified Series A+ participation as an angel 1011.

Co-investor patterns: Sigelman consistently appears alongside domain-specialist funds (Venture Guides, Firestreak Ventures, Mango Capital, Salesforce Ventures on Odigos; Y Combinator and Atlantic.vc on Laminar; TLV Partners and TQ Ventures on MetalBear) rather than generalist top-tier VCs 91112. He tends to be a small “expertise” angel added to an institutional round, not a lead check.

Exit history: WarpStream, a cloud real-time data streaming platform in his angel portfolio, was acquired on September 9, 2024 11.

Sample size caveat: With only a handful of publicly documented angel checks, this analysis is qualitative rather than statistical.

Portfolio

Company Year Stage Source
Laminar 2026-03-17 Seed 11
MetalBear 2025-09-16 Seed 11
Odigos 2024-09-09 Series A (angel participation) 911
Coval ~2025 Series A (angel participation) 8
WarpStream ~2023 Seed (acquired Sept 2024) 11
Continua AI ~2024 Seed 11
Player Zero ~2024 Seed 10

Portfolio list is drawn from Tracxn’s Ben Sigelman person profile and cross-referenced with press coverage of specific rounds. Total known checks: approximately 6–10 per Tracxn 10.

In Their Own Words

Sigelman is a prolific writer on Medium (“foggy future” Substack and el-bhs.medium.com) and has appeared on Software Engineering Radio, Software at Scale, Open Source Startup Podcast, and QCon London 131415.

On his role in Coval (voice AI), Sigelman wrote publicly: “a tiny angel” — describing his participation in the round 8. This framing is characteristic of how he positions his angel activity: expertise-driven, small check, adjacent to his technical focus areas.

No additional independently verified direct quotes from Sigelman about broader investment philosophy or founder-selection criteria were found at this time. The bulk of his public output concerns distributed tracing, OpenTelemetry, and observability architecture rather than investing.

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials about working with Sigelman as an angel investor were found at this time.

Sources

  1. ServiceNow, “Ben Sigelman” leadership page, accessed August 2026. https://www.servicenow.com/company/leadership/ben-sigelman.html↩↩↩↩

  2. ServiceNow Newsroom, “ServiceNow to Acquire Lightstep, Combining Next-Generation Observability with the World’s Leading Enterprise Digital Workflow Platform,” May 10, 2021, accessed August 2026. https://newsroom.servicenow.com/press-releases/details/2021/ServiceNow-to-Acquire-Lightstep-Combining-Next-Generation-Observability-with-the-Worlds-Leading-Enterprise-Digital-Workflow-Platform-05-10-2021-12-00-AM/default.aspx↩↩

  3. QCon London speaker page, “Ben Sigelman — Co-Founder @LightStepHQ & Co-Creator Dapper & @OpenTracing API Standard,” accessed August 2026. https://archive.qconlondon.com/speakers/ben-sigelman↩↩↩↩

  4. Crunchbase, “LightStep” company profile, accessed August 2026. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lightstep↩↩

  5. TechCrunch, “ServiceNow leaps into applications performance monitoring with Lightstep acquisition,” May 10, 2021, accessed August 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/10/servicenow-leaps-into-applications-performance-monitoring-with-lightstep-acquisition↩

  6. Software Engineering Radio, “SE Radio 337: Ben Sigelman on Distributed Tracing,” September 2018, accessed August 2026. https://se-radio.net/2018/09/se-radio-episode-337-ben-sigelman-on-distributed-tracing/↩↩

  7. O’Reilly / Google Books, Distributed Tracing in Practice: Instrumenting, Analyzing, and Debugging Microservices, by Austin Parker, Daniel Spoonhower, Jonathan Mace, Ben Sigelman, Rebecca Isaacs, accessed August 2026. https://books.google.com/books/about/Distributed_Tracing_in_Practice.html?id=g5bcDwAAQBAJ↩

  8. Ben Sigelman LinkedIn author page, accessed August 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensigelman/↩↩↩↩↩↩

  9. TechCrunch, “YC alum Odigos aims to help enterprises find errors and stamp out latency in their systems,” September 9, 2024, accessed August 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/09/yc-alum-odigos-aims-to-help-enterprises-find-errors-and-stamp-out-latency-in-their-systems/↩↩↩↩

  10. Raizer, “Ben Sigelman – Angel Investor Profile & Insights,” accessed August 2026. https://raizer.app/investor/ben-sigelman↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  11. Tracxn, “Ben Sigelman — 2025 Portfolio & Founded Companies,” accessed August 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/people/ben-sigelman/__BAvZYfip_jcKrgO2ZFuQe-oew275tsy-jjgiIZh4oHY↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  12. US Tech Times, “Odigos Raises $13M to Expand Its eBPF-Based Observability Platform,” accessed August 2026. https://ustechtimes.com/odigos-raises-13m-to-expand-its-ebpf-based-observability-platform/↩

  13. Ben Sigelman, Medium (“foggy future”), accessed August 2026. https://el-bhs.medium.com/↩

  14. Software at Scale, “Software at Scale 15 — Ben Sigelman: CEO, Lightstep,” accessed August 2026. https://www.softwareatscale.dev/p/software-at-scale-15-ben-sigelman↩

  15. Open Source Startup Podcast, “E169: Building New Standards for Observability — Lightstep & OpenTelemetry,” accessed August 2026. https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/ossstartuppodcast/episodes/E169-Building-New-Standards-for-Observability—Lightstep–OpenTelemetry-e30cnek↩