Barrels are very difficult to find. But when you have them, give them lots of equity. Promote them, take them to dinner every week, because they are virtually irreplaceable because they are also very culturally specific. So a barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company. One of the ways, the definition of a barrel is, they can take an idea from conception and take it all the way to shipping and bring people with them.
It's actually a good thing if you do reference checks on somebody and half the people you call say they are a micromanager and the other half say they actually give me a lot of responsibility. That's a feature not a bug.
