In 2011, 44 tech startups joined three local incubators – Dogpatch Labs, TechStars and the Venture Development Center – hoping to accelerate progress.

We’ve been following this Class of 2011, tallying grant, debt and equity funding, the one thing most startups need in their early stages. How are they faring?

The Boston/Cambridge Class had an amazing 2012, nabbing $86,954,881. That is on top of the $38,226,909 raised in 2011.

The fundraising surge in the first half of 2012 was due to financings at the Venture Development Center and Dogpatch. The surge in the second half was mostly due to financings at Tech Stars. By the end of 2012, 78% of the Class of 2011 had raised $125,181,790, an average of $2,781,818.

On popular fundraising site AngelList, Massachusetts startups average $751,000, according to Startup Data Trends. In other words, a startup raised more than triple the amount of funds if they were accepted into one of the Boston incubators.

But there is just no getting around the reality that a startup takes hard and sustained work to get financed. As the data shows, it takes at least a year to raise significant investment. Ironically, the startups at Venture Development Center and Dogpatch, which are not accelerators, raised most of their financing earlier than Tech Stars, an accelerator.

How does the Boston/Cambridge Class of 2011 compare to the startups that launched in other cities around the nation and world? Stay tuned for Part 2.