Bill Zartler

Insider Perspective: TBHF Director Bill Zartler

From TBHF award recipient to builder of multibillion-dollar energy and infrastructure businesses, Bill Zartler’s successful career reflects a consistent focus on fundamentals, people, and long-term strategic thinking. In a recent conversation, Bill shared lessons from his early career, his approach to entrepreneurship, and advice for the next generation of business leaders.

Q: Bill, your connection to the scholarship program goes back decades. Why has it remained so important to you?

Bill Zartler: 
I received the scholarship in 1988 when I was in graduate school at Texas A&M, and at the time it really helped financially. Many recipients are working multiple jobs while trying to get an education, and that support can be the difference between struggling and succeeding. When I re-engaged with the program around 2012, that mission still resonated with me. Identifying talented, driven students and helping remove barriers so they can focus on learning and growing their business is incredibly meaningful.

Q: Looking back, how did those early experiences shape your approach to success?

Early on, I made a conscious decision to prioritize experience over compensation. I took a lower-paying role at Dow Chemical because I wanted hands-on exposure and to learn from great people. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. One of my key mentors there, Jim Teague, had a huge early influence on how I think about leadership, fundamental business economics and problem-solving. Those foundational years taught me the value of understanding how things actually work both physically and financially before trying to scale or optimize them.

Q: What lessons carried forward as you moved into entrepreneurship and private equity?

After Dow, I joined Natural Gas Clearinghouse, where we were building midstream assets and fundamentally reshaping the industry while learning how to manage fixed assets, risk, trading, and commercialization. That environment was very entrepreneurial. Later, when I moved into private equity and eventually co-founded Denham Capital, I learned how critical it is to align capital with the right businesses and leadership teams while always understanding the underlying business fundamentals and risk.

One lesson that stayed with me is that success isn’t about chasing deals; it’s about building durable businesses with the right partners and teams.

Q: Solaris and Aris Water Solutions both became major success stories. What was your strategy in building those companies?

When I started Solaris Energy Capital after retiring from Denham in 2013, the goal wasn’t to raise a traditional fund. It was to match businesses with the right capital sources and then build them thoughtfully. Finding differentiated businesses that can solve multiple issues for your customers at once seemed to be a winning approach.

With Solaris, we took a nascent sand-handling equipment business grew it into a position that we could take public in 2017 and later expanded into power in 2024. That combination ultimately created a public company with an enterprise value currently around $4.5 billion and rapidly scaling — well beyond what we originally expected. In water, (Solaris Water Midstream renamed Aris Water Solutions followed a more traditional path, but even there, execution mattered. Building strong customer trust not losing site of return on capital goals, gaining market share and hiring strong leaders like Amanda Brock when she joined as president, and staying disciplined allowed it to scale, IPO and eventually be sold for $2 billion in about 9 years.

Q: Do fundamentals still play a role in scaling businesses?

They matter more than ever. Whether you’re talking about engineering, finance, or operations, you have to understand the basics. Technology and AI can accelerate outcomes, but they don’t replace judgment or domain knowledge. The companies that succeed long term are the ones that get the fundamentals right and then use technology and great people as force multipliers.

Q: How do you see AI changing business?

I’ve seen data evolve from manual calculations to supercomputers in the 1990s, and now to AI-driven analysis of both numbers and language. What’s different today is the speed and scale. AI is transforming how businesses process information, make decisions, and deploy capital.

We’re seeing that firsthand in our power business, which is expanding to support AI data centers and industrial growth as manufacturing returns to the U.S. Demand for electricity is rising, and infrastructure has to keep up.

Q: What advice would you give to young business builders just starting out?

First, focus on learning, not just chasing titles or compensation. Find environments where you can build real skills and learn from people who are better than you. Second, be patient. Most success stories look linear in hindsight, but they’re anything but that in real time. And finally, surround yourself with good people. Businesses are built by teams, not individuals. If you keep those principles front and center, opportunities tend to find you. The energy and power industries as all industries do, have changing demands for assets and services that help improve their underlying economics, our team has had the courage to anticipate and understand these trends and build businesses developing and delivering differentiated solutions as needs evolve.

From his earliest scholarship experience to building and scaling industry-leading companies, Bill Zartler’s career underscores a simple truth: long-term success is rooted in fundamentals, integrity, and investing in people. It’s a message that continues to resonate with the next generation of Texas business leaders.