Tristan is Co-Founder, CPO and CTO of Reflect Orbital, a space company building a constellation of satellites with large mirrors that reflect sunlight to Earth after dark.

Tristan has been designing and building flying things since age 12, ran a drone airframe business called KittyhawkFPV, and interned at Zipline in high school. He later worked at Zipline as a mechanical design engineer, leading development of the Platform 2 Delivery Droid, and studied at Stanford and The Juilliard School.

He took leave from Stanford in December 2022 to join Ben Nowack as co-founder, after first discovering Nowack through his BenNBuilds YouTube channel as a teenager. He also played violin at Juilliard.

Reflect Orbital raised a $6.5M seed round led by Shaun Maguire and Sequoia Capital in September 2024, followed by a $20M Series A led by Lux Capital in May 2025.

The company received over 260,000 requests for satellite-reflected sunlight from 157 countries and has targeted its first satellite launch for 2026. It has also received FCC approval to fly its test mission.