St. Louis-based venture capital firm Cultivation Capital announced the hire of Christian Taylor, who is coming on as Principal focusing on the SixThirty CYBER accelerator program.

In his new role, Taylor will execute operational and strategic plans to attract deal flow, while making sure the SixThirty CYBER finalist companies receive the best experience possible during programming.

“SixThirty CYBER is pioneering a new path in the cybersecurity field,” said Taylor in a statement. “I am excited to bring my past experience to the accelerator program and help grow what is already a strong startup ecosystem in St. Louis.”

Taylor,  a St. Louis native, founded Silicon Valley-based company Payvment, a SaaS platform that powered commerce and product discovery on Facebook, which was acquired by Intuit in January 2013. After Payvment’s exit, Christian joined the team at 500 Startups mentoring early-stage companies on product design, user acquisition and raising venture capital.

He’s has been a featured guest and on-air tech analyst for various television news networks including FOX Business News, Bloomberg TV and NBC, as well as a contributing writer at Mashable.

“With Christian’s past experience and expertise, we saw a perfect match,” said SixThirty CYBER managing director, Jay De Long in a statement. “We believe the accelerator program and companies will benefit from his involvement and we are thrilled to have him on board.”

SixThirty CYBER gives startups up to $100K in funding and offers mentorship and connections to top business and government customers for cyber innovation.